Beyond Bluesky: These are the apps building social experiences on the AT Protocol

Summary

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@techcrunch.com. (Note that this list is focused on consumer-facing apps people can use now, not small projects or dev tools.) Photo and video-sharing apps Flashes Image Credits:Fl...