Heemang Parmar

The app, Bluesky, is gearing up for a test run just after Musk plunked down $44 billion to buy Twitter. It already has a waiting list of users waiting to try out the app’s beta version.

It’s not yet clear what Blueksky will eventually look like or how it will function, but it has been noted as a rival to Twitter.

Bluesky’s “AT Protocol” is being touted as the critical element of a revolutionary “federated social network” that integrates ideas from the latest “decentralized technologies into a simple, fast, and open network,” according to a company blog. Users will presumably be able to move between several social media platforms using a single browser — Bluesky.

As for being a potential Twitter competitor, Dorsey tweeted earlier this month that it’s a rival to “any company trying to own the underlying fundamentals for social media or the data of the people using it.”

(But some critics believe Bluesky could be part of a stealth collaboration between Dorsey and Musk.)

Twitter customers could be in the market for a new place to land even as Musk has tried to calm concerns about what Twitter might become under his helmsmanship. He told potential advertisers in a message earlier this week that Twitter will not become a completely uncensored “free-for-all hellscape,” as he has indicated in the past. But his latest actions hint that might be exactly what he’s creating.

Musk quickly repeated that he doesn’t support lifetime Twitter bans, no matter how appalling users’ messages and attacks.

And Kanye West, now legally known as Ye, is already back on Twitter after he was bounced for appalling antisemitic screeds. But Musk claims he played no role in the rapper’s return and that his account was restored before he finalized the Twitter purchase.

Several high-profile celebrity users have already announced they’re quitting Twitter now that Musk is in charge.