There's even more good news for those looking to leave Meta's social app ecosystem in favor of more open alternatives. An independent developer is building a photo sharing app for Bluesky called Flashes. The soon-to-be-released app leverages the AT protocol, the same technology that powers Bluesky, and is built using code from the developer's previous Bluesky client, Skeets.
If Flashes launches, it could capitalize on growing consumer demand for alternatives to Big Tech's social media monopoly. This trend has led to the adoption of open source decentralized apps such as Mastodon and Bluesky, including the recently released Pixelfed mobile app built on Mastodon's ActivityPub protocol. This is also one of the factors driving TikTok users to migrate to Chinese app RedNote ahead of TikTok's ban in the US. In other words, U.S. users are now signaling that they would rather use a foreign adversary's app than return to Meta.
Screenshot image credit: Flashes/Sebastian Vogelsang
Flashes itself is based on Berlin developer Sebastian Vogelsang's earlier app, Skeets, and his focus on creating consumer apps for Bluesky, a growing social network that currently has more than 27.5 million users. This was the first effort.
While Bluesky offers its own official mobile client, Skeets differentiates itself by focusing on the needs of iPad users as well as accessibility features customized for blind and visually impaired users. I was planning. Because this is one of Vogelsang's specialties.
Late last year, Vogelsang realized that this same codebase could be used to build an app that catered to Bluesky users interested in visual content such as photos and videos. Bluesky already supports this type of media, so all you have to do is reconfigure the Skeets app so that its design and user interface resemble other photo-sharing apps like Meta's Instagram.
“The idea was to have one base social graph and different apps would choose what they wanted to display from that graph,” Vogelsang told TechCrunch. “I thought this was really interesting, because before we had networks that were segregated like this.”
He says Flashes could help bring in new potential Bluesky users who have never considered themselves “Twitter guys” and aren't yet on the social network. .
“This could give you a gateway into the entire network and protocol,” Vogelsang said.
However, the developer stresses that Flashes is not intended to be a clone of Instagram, nor does it offer all the same features.
At launch, Flashes will support photo posting of up to four images and videos up to one minute in length, similar to Bluesky. User posts in Flashes also appear in Bluesky, and comments on those posts are also fed back into the app as if they were a separate Bluesky client. It also supports Bluesky direct messages.
To make this work, Flashes simply filters Bluesky's existing timeline with photo and video posts. (In the future, Vogelsang also plans to add metadata to Flashes posts, which will allow Bluesky users to flood their feed in Bluesky's main app with photo posts in case of an issue.) )
Flashes was able to reuse Skeets' existing code, so it didn't take long to build. The app can also be marketed to Skeets' existing user base, which has downloaded the app approximately 30,500 times to date.
Vogelsang will integrate subscription-based features from both apps so that users don't have to pay twice for premium features, such as Skeets' bookmarks, drafts, mutes, rich push notifications, and other Flash-specific features. He says he is currently working on that. (Please note that both apps are free to use without a subscription.)
After that, Vogelsang said he also wants to release a video-only app called “Blue Screen.”
The developer expects the TestFlight beta to arrive ahead of that and make Flash generally available within the next few weeks. Interested users can follow Flashes' account on Bluesky for further updates.