Bluesky, the decentralized social media protocol founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, said on Friday morning Hong Kong time that 30,000 people had signed up for its preview app waiting list just 48 hours after it was announced.

See related article: Twitter’s Bluesky announces new project lead 

Fast facts

  • Bluesky is a protocol for developing decentralized social networks, enabling multiple social networks, each with its own management and review system, to interact with other social networks through an open standard. Each social network that uses the protocol is an “application.”
  • On Tuesday, the Bluesky initiative launched a website for the protocol named The AT Protocol. It also opened a waitlist for the Bluesky app, a browser to access the AT Protocol network. 
  • Organized by Twitter as a non-profit initiative, Bluesky was announced in 2019 by Dorsey, then CEO of Twitter. The project went silent until Dorsey left Twitter in May 2022.
  • Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, said earlier in October he would honor his agreement to take Twitter private, ending a months-long court battle to buy the social network in a $44 billion deal. He faces an Oct. 28 deadline to close the deal. The Washington Post reports that Musk plans to cut 70% of Twitter’s workforce after the acquisition.

See related article: Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum is more than DeFi. Is social media its next big use?