It’s as if chance played a part, but thousands of Twitter users were unable to view messages today, the same day that Jack Dorsey is launching a decentralized alternative to the social media platform. That is particularly interesting for the crypto industry, as Jack Dorsey is known as a huge Bitcoin maximalist. Chances are Bluesky, the name of the new platform, is doing something with Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.
Problems with Twitter
Via the data from Down detector we learn that thousands of people shared that they could no longer see messages in Elon Musk’s application. Since the billionaire and multi-entrepreneur took over at Twitter, things have not really been running smoothly.
About 59 percent of the issues were raised by users of the mobile application, while 35 percent came from people using Twitter’s website. There has not yet been an update from Twitter itself about the problems that are currently affecting many people.
It is clear that things are changing at Twitter. Since Musk took over as CEO, the workforce has been trimmed from 7,500 to fewer than 2,000 employees. The layoffs included product managers, data scientists and engineers.
Decentralized alternative
As the problems at Twitter pile up and the public slowly turns against Elon Musk, a decentralized alternative has emerged with Bluesky. Incidentally, this is initially a private beta phase, which you can only participate in with an invitation.
Jack Dorsey’s application is in Apple’s App Store, but is therefore not accessible to everyone. It is not yet clear when the app will also be available for Android users, but that will be a matter of time.
For the crypto industry, it will be especially interesting to see what Dorsey is up to with the Bitcoin application. Knowing him, it is inevitable that users will soon be able to pay each other with Bitcoin via the Lightning Network.
The failure of Twitter on the day Bluesky launches in the App Store is almost symbolic of the rise of decentralized web applications, which must compete with the centralized monopolists. Bluesky is an application where basically no one has full control. It is important to know that Bluesky does not, in principle, run on blockchain technology.