Jack Dorsey-Backed Bluesky Gains Traction As App Downloads Surge 600% in April

thewrap.com:

CNBC reported, citing data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Twitter downloads still far surpassed the total, the reported noted, with 14.9 million app downloads in April.

In fact, that figure represented a 2% uptick from 14.6 million downloads in March.But invite-only Bluesky is getting more attention now than a different decentralized messaging app, Mastodon, which garnered a lot of chatter in November after Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter.Like the early days of Twitter, activity on Bluesky feels a bit looser and less serious, and is drawing more celebrities, newsmakers and journalists.Bluesky was initially launched in 2019 as a project within Twitter when Dorsey was still CEO, CNBC noted.

It was transferred in February 2022 to a Bluesky Public Benefit LLC, with Jay Graber as CEO and Dorsey as one of the founding board members.

Two months later, as talks were underway with Musk about joining Twitter’s board, the prelude to his outright purchase of the company, Bluesky announced that it had pulled in $13 million in funding “to ensure we have the freedom and independence to get started on R&D.”The goal, the post said, was to “develop technologies that enable open and decentralized public conversation.”Notably, Mastodon turned down five funding offers from Silicon Valley, with the platform’s founder stating he was determined to keep the crowdfunded, open-source platform non-profit. “Mastodon will not turn into everything you hate about Twitter,” said Eugen Rochko, the German software developer who created the platform in 2016.Dorsey has also backed another potential rival for Twitter, donating 14 bitcoin, worth about $245,000, in December to a decentralized social media project called Nostr, that lets users own.