Jack Dorsey.Photo: Scott Olson/Getty
Jack Dorseyis one step closer to providing online refuge for the slew of social media users ready to desert Twitter in the wake ofElon Musk’s takeover.
A week before Musktook control of the companyThursday and immediately fired its CEO Parag Agrawal and two other top executives, Twitter’s co-founder and former CEO Dorsey, 45, announced that his decentralized social appBlueskyis seeking beta testers.
“The next step is tostart testing the protocol. Distributed protocol development is a tricky process,” the company shared in a news release last Tuesday. “It requires coordination from many parties once a network is deployed, so we’re going to start in private beta to iron out issues.
“As we beta test, we’ll continue to iterate on the protocol specs and share details about how it works. When it’s ready, we’ll move to the open beta,” it added, sharing a link to sign up for thebeta test’s waitlist.
“The word ‘Bluesky’ evokes a wide-open space of possibility. It was the original name for this project before it took shape, and continues to be the name of our company,” the release stated. “We’re calling the application we’re building Bluesky because it will be a portal to the world of possibility on top of the AT Protocol.”
Dorsey shared last week on Twitter that Bluesky intends to be “a competitor to any companytrying to own the underlying fundamentals for social media or the data of the people using it”
Elon Musk.Randy Shropshire/Getty Images
In February, the companyannounced the formation of Bluesky PBLLC, “a Public Benefit LLC that will implement that vision as an independent organization,” with Dorsey as one of its board members.
After Dorsey, who co-founded Twitter in 2006,stepped down as the company’s CEOin November, Musk, 51,made an offer to buy the social networkin April.
RELATED VIDEO: Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey on Elon Musk’s New Ownership: ‘This Is the Right Path’
Dorsey wrote at the time that he believes with “all my heart” that Musk taking over was “the right path” for Twitter: “In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving the problem of it being a company, however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.”
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Although Muskreached a deal to buy Twitterfor $44 billion in late April, he soon announced plans toback out of the agreementin July, sparking alawsuit from Twitterand a legal back-and-forth before moving forward with the deal again.
source: people.com
