The Bluesky and Mastodon social networks could soon be accessible from a single app – at least that’s what Bluesky hopes. The new decentralized social network, initially incubated within Twitter run by Jack Dorsey, is backing a project that would connect – or “bridge” – Mastodon queries to Bluesky queries so that mainstream apps, like Ivory, would also be compatible with Bluesky.
The project, called SkyBridge, was among the recipients of a small distribution of $4,800 in grant funding from Bluesky, divided among the projects. SkyBridge was the second largest beneficiary of this current cohort, with $800 of the total.
Bluesky announced last month that it would use a portion of its funds to fuel efforts in the developer ecosystem through the AT Protocol Grant program. From a financial perspective, the program is quite insignificant, as it only distributes $10,000 in grants, with $4,800 already distributed. This isn’t enough to start a new company in this area, but it represents a way to encourage developers who might have wanted to get into the new AT protocol anyway. It also serves as an early signal of the type of development work Bluesky supports – something that could help drive adoption among developers who have already (and repeatedly) been burned by Twitter and its shifting priorities.
Other program beneficiaries are also doing valuable work.
For example, Blacksky Algorithms is building a suite of services to provide personalized moderation services to Black Bluesky users. Others create Bluesky consumer apps, developer tools, analytics resources, and more.
But SkyBridge is particularly interesting because it could potentially open the small startup to a wider audience.
Unlike Mastodon and other decentralized applications powered by the legacy ActivityPub protocol, Bluesky is developing a new decentralized social networking protocol. Unfortunately, for end users who have begun exploring the open source social networks widely known as “fediverse,” Bluesky’s decision to rely on a different protocol means users must switch applications to access the Bluesky network. They can’t use their favorite Mastodon app to browse Bluesky content, of course.
If successful, SkyBridge could change this as it would be able to translate Mastodon API calls into Bluesky API calls. The bridge is currently being tested on Ivory on iOS and Mac; This is the Mastodon app from the company that previously developed a popular third-party Twitter app called Tweetbot. Notes SkyBridge developer @videah.net on Bluesky, the project is currently undergoing a significant rewrite from Dart to Rust, which is why its GitHub repository hasn’t seen much activity lately.
He nevertheless believes that the work is promising.
“It’s already turning out to be much more stable, I hope to show it soon,” Vidah posted on Bluesky sharing the news of the grant.
Today, Bluesky has nearly 5.6 million users, while the ActivityPub-backed fediverse has over 10 million users. Instagram Threads (which integrates with ActivityPub) now has more than 150 million monthly active users, Meta announced this week in earnings.
The decision to connect Bluesky and Mastodon has been the subject of debate of late. People disagree about how bridges should be built, or whether a bridge should be built at all. Another software developer, Ryan Barrett, faced backlash on GitHub when building another bridge called Bridgy Fed, which would be disabled by default, meaning Mastodon posts would appear on Bluesky even if the The author of the publication had not chosen this option. . It readjusted its plans to create a discoverable opt-in, which would allow users to request to follow accounts on the different networks.
With its support of SkyBridge, Bluesky signals its desire to blur the lines between Mastodon and Bluesky.
Ultimately, people may not need to think about what protocol an application runs on, just like no one thinks about their email client using SMTP, POP3, or IMAP. And in an ideal outcome, people would be able to connect with their friends on any social network, regardless of its basis, and also see their friends’ responses in return.
techcrunch
