Latest news with #ATProto
TechCrunch
30-07-2025
- TechCrunch
Germ brings end-to-end encrypted messages to Bluesky
A new startup called Germ is bringing end-to-end encrypted messaging to the Bluesky social network, allowing its users to have a more secure option for chats than Bluesky's existing DMs. After over two years of development, the service is launching its encrypted DMs for Bluesky into beta this week, with plans to gradually onboard new testers ahead of a public launch. In time, the technology that Germ is building, much of which is open sourced, could allow Bluesky itself to introduce encrypted messaging into its own app. Germ was designed to offer an alternative to existing end-to-end encrypted platforms that dominate globally, like iMessage, Signal, and WhatsApp. Germ takes advantage of newer technologies, like Messaging Layer Security (MLS), a new standard approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and the AT Protocol (or AT Proto), which powers Bluesky. Image Credits:Germ Image Credits:Germ However, instead of requiring a user's phone number as some messaging apps do, Germ integrates with AT Proto. This allows Germ users to securely chat with friends from Bluesky and the wider open social web, including apps like Flashes and Skylight, but with added controls over the user experience. For instance, you can choose to accept DMs from people you follow on Bluesky, or you could configure it so that only you can initiate chats with other people. Plus, when you block a user in Germ, you can choose whether you want to only block them in Germ or if you want to block them across Bluesky and other AT Proto-powered apps as well. The concept for Germ comes from co-founders Tessa Brown (CEO), a communications scholar who previously taught at Stanford, and Mark Xue, who worked as a privacy engineer at Apple on technologies like FaceTime and iMessage. Brown's studies led her to realize that access to private communications was fundamental to the health of social networks. Image Credits:Germ 'We know that, psychologically, you can't build a good relationship with people if you feel like you're being stared at and manipulated all the time. And that's really what social media is today,' Brown tells TechCrunch. 'So I came out of that work with a really strong conviction around end-to-end encrypted messaging as kind of the centerpiece of what I thought was the future of social media and the future of communication,' she adds. Xue, meanwhile, came out of Apple believing that the use of phone numbers and telephony is a dated technology to serve as the basis for secure communications, and wanted to build something new. Today, Germ's service works by way of a 'magic link,' which is generated for you and pasted into your Bluesky bio. When another Bluesky user on iOS clicks this link, they can immediately chat with you without downloading a new app from the App Store. To make this possible, Germ takes advantage of underutilized Apple technology called App Clips, which allow users to run a portion of an app's code on their device without installing the full app. Today, app clips are used for miscellaneous one-off type transactions, like paying for parking via a QR code. But in Germ's case, they allow for quick chats. While the user experience is simple enough, the technology behind it is not. The link itself is actually a cryptographic key that authenticates the user's AT Proto identity to confirm that the user is the person associated with that Bluesky handle. From the Germ app clip, you can choose to install the Germ iOS app, which offers more controls, access to your friends list, and now, Bluesky pairing. The pairing feature was somewhat finicky in our tests, but we are running the iOS 26 developer beta, which may be causing complications. (To work around the issue, we started the chat from the app clip first, before trying to authenticate from the installed app.) Tessa Brown, Germ Network CEO Image Credits:Germ Network Instagram (opens in a new window) Brown tells TechCrunch that she's excited about building within the Bluesky community, given the app's growing cultural impact, which has attracted big names in U.S. politics, like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other representatives, senators, and governors, to join. Given that Germ is ahead of the Bluesky team itself in building encrypted messaging technology, Brown is hopeful that Germ's protocol could be more broadly adopted by Bluesky and others in the future. While currently free to use, the Germ app may later introduce a premium subscription upgrade that offers more advanced services, including private AI services, personalization tools, and more. The four-person startup has raised pre-seed funding from angel investors, including a co-author of MLS and other trust and safety experts. Institutional investors include K5 Global and Mozilla Ventures. The company hopes to raise additional funds for an Android version in the future.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Bluesky backlash misses the point
Bluesky is missing an opportunity to explain to people that its network is more than just its own Bluesky social app. In recent weeks, a number of headlines and posts have surfaced questioning whether Bluesky's growth is declining, if the network has become too much of a left-leaning echo chamber, or if its users lack a sense of humor, among other charges. Investor Mark Cuban, who even financially backed Skylight, a video app built on Bluesky's underlying protocol, AT Proto, complained this week that replies on Bluesky have become too hateful. 'Engagement went from great convos on many topics, to agree with me or you are a nazi fascist,' he wrote in a post on Bluesky. That, he said, is 'forcing' people to return to X. This embedded content is not available in your region. Naturally, X owner Elon Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino have capitalized on this unrest, with the former posting that Bluesky is a 'bunch of super judgy hall monitors' and the latter proclaiming that X is the 'true' global town square. The debate around this topic is not surprising. Without a more direct push to showcase the wider network of apps built on the open protocol that Bluesky's team spearheaded, it was only a matter of time before the Bluesky brand became pigeon-holed as the liberal and leftist alternative to X. That characterization of Bluesky, however, is not a complete picture of what the company has been building — but it could become a stumbling block toward its further growth if not corrected. It's true that many of Bluesky's initial users are those who abandoned X because they were unhappy with its new ownership under Musk and its accompanying right-wing shift. After the November elections in the U.S., Bluesky's adoption soared as X users fled the platform headed by Trump's biggest individual backer. At the time, Bluesky was adding millions of users in rapid succession, climbing from north of 9 million users in September to nearly 15 million by mid-November and then 20 million just days later. That growth continued in the months that followed, as top Democrats like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton joined the app. Today, Bluesky has more than 36.5 million registered users, its public data indicates. It follows, then, that users' conversations around news and politics on Bluesky would help to define the network's tone as they became the dominant voices. Of course, that can spell trouble for any social network, as partisan apps on both the left, like Telepath, and right, like Parler, have failed to successfully challenge X. What's missing in this current narrative is the fact that Bluesky's social app is only meant to be one example of what's possible within the wider AT Proto ecosystem. If you don't like the tone of the topics trending on Bluesky, you can switch to other apps, change your default feeds, or even build your own social platform using the technology. Already, people are using the protocol that powers Bluesky to build social experiences for specific groups — like Blacksky is doing for the Black online community or like Gander Social is doing for social media users in Canada. There are also feed builders like Graze and those in Surf that let you create custom feeds where you can focus on specific content you care about — like video games or baseball — and exclude others, like politics. Built into Bluesky (and other third-party clients) are tools that let you pick your default feed and add others that interest you from a range of topics. If you want to follow a feed devoted to your favorite TV show or animal, for instance, you can. In other words, Bluesky is meant to be what you make it, and its content can be consumed in whatever format you prefer best. In addition to Bluesky itself, the wider network of apps built on the AT Protocol includes photo- and video-sharing apps, livestreaming tools, communication apps, blogging apps, music apps, movie and TV recommendation apps, and more. Other tools also let you combine feeds from Bluesky with other social networks. Openvibe, for instance, can mix together feeds from social networks like Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Nostr. Apps like Surf and Tapestry offer ways to track posts on open social platforms as well as those published with other open protocols like RSS. This lets the apps pull in content from blogs, news sites, YouTube, and podcasts. The team at Bluesky may not be the ones directly building these other social experiences and tools, but highlighting and promoting the existence of this wider, connected social network benefits Bluesky's brand. It shows that not only is Bluesky more than just a Twitter/X alternative, it's just one app in a wider social ecosystem built on open technology — and that's bigger than just building another X. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mark Cuban backs Skylight, a TikTok alternative built on Bluesky's underlying technology
Skylight, a startup taking on TikTok with a more open alternative, is launching its mobile app to the public on Tuesday after just 10 weeks of active development. The app, which is backed by Mark Cuban and others, is now one of many to build on top of the AT Protocol -- the same technology that underpins the social network Bluesky and a growing number of other apps. Developed by co-founders Tori White (CEO) and Reed Hermeyer (CTO), Skylight offers a short-form video app experience with many familiar features, including an in-app video editor; the ability to comment, like, and share videos; set up your own user profile; and follow others. Because it's also built on the AT Protocol (or "ATProto" for short), users will immediately be tapped into Bluesky's network of over 33.8 million users. That means videos posted on Skylight can be seen and engaged with by users on Bluesky and other ATProto-based apps, like the more photo-centric app Flashes, for example. The company is funded by a pre-seed round from Cuban, who said earlier this year that he wanted to fund a TikTok alternative built on the AT Protocol. Leslie Feinzaig's Graham & Walker Venture Fund also invested. White, who used to be a travel influencer and is now a self-taught software developer living in Seattle, says she and co-founder Hermeyer were inspired to create Skylight when they first heard that TikTok was getting banned in the U.S. In preparation for the ban, which is currently on pause, White had backed up her TikTok videos. But she still worried about losing access to her community and comments. She and Hermeyer had already been playing around with ATProto and saw the potential. "The first thing that interested us about ATProto was that Bluesky was not failing," Hermeyer told TechCrunch at the ATmosphere Conference in Seattle in March. "We didn't see the 'fail whale,'" he said, a reference to the graphic that appeared in Twitter's early days when the app was constantly crashing. "That made us feel comfortable about the underlying technology." Hermeyer and White soon realized this was an ideal time to build a new social app on the protocol that could be "ban-proof." Tapping into her influencer background, White began documenting Skylight's development on TikTok, which helped bring exposure to the product and build a following of potentially interested users. "We started with distribution," White explained. "I actually made a video before we ever wrote a line of code for this … [so] everyone can follow our journey as we build," she told TechCrunch at the conference. "We were like, oh my gosh, we are building this thing that we think is so cool, but no one cares yet. So we have to build a way to tell people about it so that they would care, because we know people need it," she said. Today, White's @buildwithtori TikTok profile has nearly 50,000 followers, many of which turned into early testers. Like Bluesky, Skylight supports video uploads of up to three minutes in length, a recent increase from the one-minute-long videos supported previously. But White sees Skylight becoming more than just a decentralized TikTok clone. She hints that Skylight in the future will allow users to customize their feed, including by utilizing new gestures beyond swiping and scrolling. Other features in the works include support for sounds, duets, stitching, bookmarks, and playlists. The app is in beta on the Google Play Store and is now available publicly on Apple's App Store after initial testing. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at
Yahoo
30-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Beyond Bluesky: These are the apps building social experiences on the AT Protocol
A year ago, Bluesky was opening up to the public and was known as one of the many X competitors that emerged after Elon Musk acquired the network formerly known as Twitter. Today, Bluesky's social network has grown to over 33 million users, while the technology it's built upon -- the AT Protocol (or ATProto for short) -- is being used to develop dozens more applications designed to work together as part of an open social web. The developers behind many of these apps attended the first conference dedicated to the AT Protocol, ATmosphere, held in Seattle last weekend. There, they learned what's ahead for ATProto, what challenges still need to be overcome, and what other things they'll need to think about as they build for this new social app ecosystem. Others attended online, watched the talks and presentations remotely, and participated in a growing Discord chat for community members. The ATProto community is working to rebuild Web 2.0, an earlier version of the social web that included social media websites, blogs, wikis, video- and photo-sharing sites, and other collaborative and hosted services. Except this time around, the apps are being built on open technology, not siloed into centralized services that tend to be operated by tech giants. Bluesky was the first of these services to emerge, but if the open social web movement has any staying power, it won't be the last. Below is a list of AT Protocol-based, consumer-facing apps that are either built on top of Bluesky or its underlying protocol, allowing users to take back control over their social networking experiences and personal data. Many of these are still in early development but showcase the potential for what's ahead in this expanding ecosystem. This is a work in progress! Apps are still being added. Feeling left out? Email sarahp@ (Note that this list is focused on consumer-facing apps people can use now, not small projects or dev tools.) Flashes is an Instagram alternative based on Berlin developer Sebastian Vogelsang's earlier app, Skeets, a Bluesky client. Launched publicly at the end of February, Flashes grabbed 30,000 downloads in its first 24 hours for offering a classic Instagram experience. Users can upload up to four photos or videos of up to 3 minutes in length, up from 1 minute previously, thanks to an update Bluesky released. The app offers photo filters, curated feeds from artists, custom feeds, and a Portfolio Mode where photographers can showcase their work. Spark (originally called Reelo) is a video-first app that is built on top of the AT Protocol, not just Bluesky. That allows the app to differentiate itself with a broader feature set that will include support for longer videos, filters, effects, a music library, and, eventually, livestreaming. Built by Seattle-based co-founders Victoria ('Tori') White and Reed Harmeyer, Skylight is built on top of Bluesky, offering features such as likes, follows, comments, and profile pages. Users can follow the app's active development on its co-founder's TikTok page as the team adds more features, including video support. The app is in testing on iOS and Android. Pinksky is another one of many apps trying to build an alternative to Instagram using ATProto. Built by developer Ramon Souza, the app is available on both iOS and Android and will focus mainly on photo-sharing, like classic Instagram did. The app offers similar features to Instagram, including user profiles, a feed of photos and videos, and a Stories section where posts remain visible for 24 hours. Bluescreen, also built by Vogelsang, is an upcoming app that will focus on videos posted to the Bluesky social network. The generically named Videos for Bluesky is another app built on top of Bluesky from 'MszPro,' aka Hoshida Takiyoshi, an indie Japanese developer. Like others, Videos for Bluesky lets you browse videos posted to the Bluesky social network by vertically scrolling in a TikTok-like user interface with familiar Like, Repost, and Reply buttons. Streamplace is the first livestreaming video service built on top of the AT Protocol. The service, which was recently used to livestream the ATmosphere conference in Seattle, offers a familiar streaming experience with support for high-quality videos, livestreaming, clips, and uploads. All the video content is also cryptographically signed by creators and respects their consent preferences. It is built on the same public key infrastructure as decentralized social networks. Founded by Eli Mallon, Streamplace was initially backed by his previous employer, Livepeer (another decentralized video platform), which operated a crypto treasury where funds are invested into other projects. That allowed him to get Streamplace off the ground. Now he sees potential in building out a technology that could appeal to creators like Twitch streamers, who would rather connect directly with fans through their own app or website instead of having to split their revenue with Twitch owner Amazon. Graze is a startup that lets you easily build, customize, publish, and manage Bluesky feeds and, eventually, monetize them with ads, sponsored posts, and subscriptions. The service is working with the Bluesky firehose, aka the Jetstream, which includes all the public posts on the social network. Flipboard's newest app, Surf, lets you build your own custom feeds from across the open web, including not only Bluesky but also Mastodon, RSS, and more. That means you can mix in news articles, blog posts, podcasts, and YouTube feeds into the custom feeds you build in Surf, alongside social posts. You can then use Surf to browse your feeds and others from the community across a range of topics and interests. Surf is still in private beta testing, but a signup list is available. A web-based, TweetDeck-like client for Bluesky, SkyFeed lets you create a dashboard of your feeds and profiles. However, most of its users come to SkyFeed because it also offers an easy way for even nondevelopers to build custom feeds based on lists or regexes. Germ's big idea is not just to offer an alternative to your phone messages, like Signal, but to build a social platform where you could discover and connect with others for any reason: marketplace exchanges, dating, social networking, and more. However, it would be one where you were in control of the data you were sharing and could stop that sharing at any time. Currently an end-to-end encrypted messenger that you can download from the App Store, Germ lets you build and share multiple identities. Plus, you can start chatting with someone on Germ even if they don't have the app installed, thanks to its use of Apple's App Clips technology. This allows you to have a lightweight app experience on your iPhone before you download the full application from the App Store. Germ was founded by writer and Stanford lecturer Tessa Brown (CEO) and former Apple privacy engineer Mark Xue (CTO). The team is now working on a Bluesky integration that would allow users to chat securely with their Bluesky friends. A peer-to-peer messaging app built on the AT Protocol, Roomy is similar in some ways to Discord but taps into open standards. For instance, ATProto is used for social discovery, while Automerge is used for peer-to-peer discovery. The app is backed by funding from Skyseed and is currently in alpha testing. You can log into Roomy with your Bluesky account and direct message other users to engage in chats. The messages are encrypted, but this is an experimental project and not audited, so be aware. Plus, some non-encrypted metadata shows who you were talking to but not the contents of those messages. (In other words, don't swap out Signal for Roomy yet.) Founded by former Stability AI engineer John Sabath, Dazzle offers a website that makes sense of the firehose of data from Bluesky and organizes it into categories, highlighting the trends across various topics. While much of the early discussion on Bluesky today leans political, Dazzle's site can help you find other topics and conversations taking place. Dazzle lets you give it instructions to tune the site to your own interests, too. You could ask it to show you a topic but without any posts featuring political discussions, for example. That means you could use Dazzle to show you local news, but not national politics, or you could keep your experience focused only on those who are posting with a positive sentiment. The idea is that you'll be able to switch between these different modes, generated using AI technology, without actually having to build custom feeds. Instead, you can just type in what you want to see (or not see) into a chat-like interface, then have Dazzle reconfigure itself to offer you posts that match whatever "vibe" you had just requested. Link aggregation service Sill lets you keep up with what everyone's talking about on alternative social media sites like Bluesky and Mastodon in one place. The service is similar to the older startup Nuzzel, which was acquired by Twitter as part of its deal for Scroll in 2021, then integrated into Twitter's app. Popular with news junkies, Nuzzel helped users keep track of what everyone on Twitter was talking about, reading, and resharing that day. Sill is also among the early adopters using Bluesky's OAuth for the AT Protocol instead of app passwords, making it easier to log in. Once connected, you'll see the most shared links across your services and the resulting conversations. A decentralized and federated link aggregator built on ATProto, Frontpage offers a simple interface for organizing and upvoting interesting posts and links being shared across the social network. It also supports commenting and notifications. Also by Vogelsang, Skeets is an alternative to Bluesky's main app that's optimized for accessibility and works well on both iPhone and iPad. Another TweetDeck-style web app, lets you fill your screen with columns featuring your Home feed, Notifications, custom feeds, lists, and more. The app also supports multiple accounts and the scheduling of posts. An event and RSVP management system, Smoke Signal is the Bluesky alternative to something like Eventbrite or Facebook Events. Built on top of ATProto, Smoke Signal supports OAuth, allowing users to discover communities and create and RSVP to events while also keeping hold of their own personal data. A Markdown blogging service for the AT Protocol, White Wind lets you use your ATProto account to log in, then write in Markdown. The service includes tools for uploading images, previewing your post, and more, with everything stored in your account's PDS (personal data service). When you post on Bluesky, those replies are included on your blog automatically. Largely a growth and analytics toolset for Bluesky, BlueSkyHunter also offers a way to tap into trends on the social network. One section in the app called Viral Posts showcases the more popular posts. This could help content planners pick up on trends and memes or find templates that are popular with other users that they could adopt. Fedica offers an online dashboard that allows you to compose and schedule posts across social networks, including Bluesky, Threads, X, Mastodon, and Pixelfed, among others. It also supports more traditional social apps like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and YouTube. Included in its plans are a variety of features for social listening, tools for tracking hashtags, keywords, and post reach, as well as those for follower analysis. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at
