President Donald Trump has extended the deadline for the TikTok ban by 75 days. Trump shared a post on Truth Social on Friday stating that he is signing an executive order to allow for more time to finalize a deal.
“My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress,” Trump wrote. “The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed, which is why I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days.”
He continued, “We hope to continue working in Good Faith with China, who I understand are not very happy about our Reciprocal Tariffs (Necessary for Fair and Balanced Trade between China and the U.S.A.!). This proves that Tariffs are the most powerful Economic tool, and very important to our National Security! We do not want TikTok to ‘go dark.’ We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
The ban was previously scheduled to go into effect on April 5 after Trump extended it back in January on his first day in office.
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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.)
Flashes is an Instagram alternative based on Berlin developer Sebastian Vogelsang’s earlier app, Skeets, a Bluesky client. Launched publicly at the end of February, Flashes grabbed 30,000 downloads in its first 24 hours for offering a classic Instagram experience. Users can upload up to four photos or videos of up to 3 minutes in length, up from 1 minute previously, thanks to an update Bluesky released. The app offers photo filters, curated feeds from artists, custom feeds, and a Portfolio Mode where photographers can showcase their work.
Spark (originally called Reelo) is a video-first app that is built on top of the AT Protocol, not just Bluesky. That allows the app to differentiate itself with a broader feature set that will include support for longer videos, filters, effects, a music library, and, eventually, livestreaming.
Built by Seattle-based co-founders Victoria (“Tori”) White and Reed Harmeyer, Skylight is built on top of Bluesky, offering features such as likes, follows, comments, and profile pages. Users can follow the app’s active development on its co-founder’s TikTok page as the team adds more features, including video support.
The app is in testing on iOS and Android.
Pinksky is another one of many apps trying to build an alternative to Instagram using ATProto. Built by developer Ramon Souza, the app is available on both iOS and Android and will focus mainly on photo-sharing, like classic Instagram did. The app offers similar features to Instagram, including user profiles, a feed of photos and videos, and a Stories section where posts remain visible for 24 hours.
Bluescreen, also built by Vogelsang, is an upcoming app that will focus on videos posted to the Bluesky social network.
The generically named Videos for Bluesky is another app built on top of Bluesky from “MszPro,” aka Hoshida Takiyoshi, an indie Japanese developer. Like others, Videos for Bluesky lets you browse videos posted to the Bluesky social network by vertically scrolling in a TikTok-like user interface with familiar Like, Repost, and Reply buttons.
Streamplace is the first livestreaming video service built on top of the AT Protocol. The service, which was recently used to livestream the ATmosphere conference in Seattle, offers a familiar streaming experience with support for high-quality videos, livestreaming, clips, and uploads. All the video content is also cryptographically signed by creators and respects their consent preferences. It is built on the same public key infrastructure as decentralized social networks.
Founded by Eli Mallon, Streamplace was initially backed by his previous employer, Livepeer (another decentralized video platform), which operated a crypto treasury where funds are invested into other projects. That allowed him to get Streamplace off the ground. Now he sees potential in building out a technology that could appeal to creators like Twitch streamers, who would rather connect directly with fans through their own app or website instead of having to split their revenue with Twitch owner Amazon.
Graze is a startup that lets you easily build, customize, publish, and manage Bluesky feeds and, eventually, monetize them with ads, sponsored posts, and subscriptions. The service is working with the Bluesky firehose, aka the Jetstream, which includes all the public posts on the social network.
Flipboard’s newest app, Surf, lets you build your own custom feeds from across the open web, including not only Bluesky but also Mastodon, RSS, and more. That means you can mix in news articles, blog posts, podcasts, and YouTube feeds into the custom feeds you build in Surf, alongside social posts. You can then use Surf to browse your feeds and others from the community across a range of topics and interests. Surf is still in private beta testing, but a signup list is available.
A web-based, TweetDeck-like client for Bluesky, SkyFeed lets you create a dashboard of your feeds and profiles. However, most of its users come to SkyFeed because it also offers an easy way for even non-developers to build custom feeds based on lists or regexes.
Germ’s big idea is not just to offer an alternative to your phone messages, like Signal, but to build a social platform where you could discover and connect with others for any reason: marketplace exchanges, dating, social networking, and more. However, it would be one where you were in control of the data you were sharing and could stop that sharing at any time.
Currently an end-to-end encrypted messenger that you can download from the App Store, Germ lets you build and share multiple identities. Plus, you can start chatting with someone on Germ even if they don’t have the app installed, thanks to its use of Apple’s App Clips technology. This allows you to have a lightweight app experience on your iPhone before you download the full application from the App Store.
Germ was founded by writer and Stanford lecturer Tessa Brown (CEO) and former Apple privacy engineer Mark Xue (CTO). The team is now working on a Bluesky integration that would allow users to chat securely with their Bluesky friends.
A peer-to-peer messaging app built on the AT Protocol, Roomy is similar in some ways to Discord but taps into open standards. For instance, ATProto is used for social discovery, while Automerge is used for peer-to-peer discovery. The app is backed by funding from Skyseed and is currently in alpha testing.
You can log into Roomy with your Bluesky account and direct message other users to engage in chats. The messages are encrypted, but this is an experimental project and not audited, so be aware. Plus, some non-encrypted metadata shows who you were talking to but not the contents of those messages. (In other words, don’t swap out Signal for Roomy yet.)
Founded by former Stability AI engineers John Sabath and Conner Ruhl, Dazzle offers a website that makes sense of the firehose of data from Bluesky and organizes it into categories, highlighting the trends across various topics. While much of the early discussion on Bluesky today leans political, Dazzle’s site can help you find other topics and conversations taking place.
Dazzle lets you give it instructions to tune the site to your own interests, too. You could ask it to show you a topic but without any posts featuring political discussions, for example. That means you could use Dazzle to show you local news, but not national politics, or you could keep your experience focused only on those who are posting with a positive sentiment.
The idea is that you’ll be able to switch between these different modes, generated using AI technology, without actually having to build custom feeds. Instead, you can just type in what you want to see (or not see) into a chat-like interface, then have Dazzle reconfigure itself to offer you posts that match whatever “vibe” you had just requested.
Link aggregation service Sill lets you keep up with what everyone’s talking about on alternative social media sites like Bluesky and Mastodon in one place. The service is similar to the older startup Nuzzel, which was acquired by Twitter as part of its deal for Scroll in 2021, then integrated into Twitter’s app. Popular with news junkies, Nuzzel helped users keep track of what everyone on Twitter was talking about, reading, and resharing that day.
Sill is also among the early adopters using Bluesky’s OAuth for the AT Protocol instead of app passwords, making it easier to log in. Once connected, you’ll see the most shared links across your services and the resulting conversations.
A decentralized and federated link aggregator built on ATProto, Frontpage offers a simple interface for organizing and upvoting interesting posts and links being shared across the social network. It also supports commenting and notifications.
Also by Vogelsang, Skeets is an alternative to Bluesky’s main app that’s optimized for accessibility and works well on both iPhone and iPad.
Another TweetDeck-style web app, Deck.blue lets you fill your screen with columns featuring your Home feed, Notifications, custom feeds, lists, and more. The app also supports multiple accounts and the scheduling of posts.
Dragonfly offers an alternative client app for Bluesky users on macOS and iPad, with support for other platforms still in the works. The app is designed to offer some of the features the main Bluesky app doesn’t have, most notably: Bookmarks and support for Drafts. The app is subscription-based at 99 cents/month, $9.99/year, or $24.99 as a one-time purchase.
Built exclusively for Windows users, Beeskie is a free and open source app that’s been built to match the Windows design language. The app is currently in beta and offers a basic set of features, but is continuing to evolve.
The Skywalker app brings a third-party Bluesky experience to Android users which adds a handful of in-demand features like bookmarks and saving drafts.
An event and RSVP management system, Smoke Signal is the Bluesky alternative to something like Eventbrite or Facebook Events. Built on top of ATProto, Smoke Signal supports OAuth, allowing users to discover communities and create and RSVP to events while also keeping hold of their own personal data.
An ATProto-based alternative to Meetup.com, OpenMeet is an open source platform that allows people to create interest groups, professional networking groups, community groups, and others, and schedule and manage events. Visitors can use the site to find local events and activities and securely communicate with other group members. The service also keeps user information private, it says. OpenMeet is managed by open source contributors.
A Markdown blogging service for the AT Protocol, White Wind lets you use your ATProto account to log in, then write in Markdown. The service includes tools for uploading images, previewing your post, and more, with everything stored in your account’s PDS (personal data service). When you post on Bluesky, those replies are included on your blog automatically.
Largely a growth and analytics toolset for Bluesky, BlueSkyHunter also offers a way to tap into trends on the social network. One section in the app called Viral Posts showcases the more popular posts. This could help content planners pick up on trends and memes or find templates that are popular with other users that they could adopt.
Fedica offers an online dashboard that allows you to compose and schedule posts across social networks, including Bluesky, Threads, X, Mastodon, and Pixelfed, among others. It also supports more traditional social apps like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and YouTube. Included in its plans are a variety of features for social listening, tools for tracking hashtags, keywords, and post reach, as well as those for follower analysis.
Openvibe’s app allows you to cross-post to multiple social networks at once, including Mastodon, Bluesky, Nostr, and Threads. The app — backed by Czech Founders VC and Automattic — is designed to be an easy-to-use gateway to the open social web, as you don’t have to switch apps constantly to keep up with friends on multiple networks. Instead, you can browse all their updates in a combined timeline.
Croissant’s simple cross-posting app for iOS offers a way to reach users on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads from one place. The app supports adding things like images, alt text, hashtags, threaded posts, and other service-specific features. Croissant is available as a subscription at $2.99/month or $19.99/year or as a one-time purchase of $59.99.
Also listed above under the analytics section, Fedica offers a cross-posting feature where posts can be scheduled or posted live.
Not to be confused with the video app Skylight above, Skylights is a public reviews platform built on AT Proto where you can review books, movies, and TV shows, with plans to add support for reviewing papers and URLs in the future. Unlike traditional review platforms, the data you share on Skylights is yours, not “locked into a silo,” the website notes.
Still in open beta on iOS, Popsky is designed to be a place where you can discover and discuss your favorite TV shows, movies, books, and video games. Also built on the AT Protocol, you can mark items as in progress or completed (or watched), manage spoilers, import data from Letterboxd, and more, with reviews and discussions synced back to Bluesky’s social network.
A music tracking and discovery platform built on top of the AT Protocol, Rocksky is building something akin to the Last.fm for the decentralized web. Similar to Last.fm, Rocksky lets you “scribble” your listening activity, track your stats, explore music, and share your musical taste, without your data being tied to a single platform. The service also plans to be open-sourced in the future.
Bluecast’s real-time audio streaming service for Bluesky users lets anyone start streaming without special equipment. The service’s web app works across platforms, including mobile and desktop, and includes features like multi-guest streaming, streaming karaoke, background music and sound effects, visual effects, and other advanced features.
A project built by the team at Federation Studio, Whoosh is building the Linktree for the open social web. The service allows users to share and showcase their online presence in one place, which can include everything from their open social profiles on Bluesky to those on larger platforms like TikTok. However, all the data created on Woosh is saved to your Bluesky or AT Protocol user account, which means you could publish your own App View to render your page the way you want, or use other services to do so in the future.
Cred.blue’s service gives you an easy way to generate a “score” based on a user’s identity in the ATProto ecosystem. While in some ways the idea of scoring someone’s social activity makes this sound like a Klout for the open social web, Cred.blue’s goal is to help users understand more about the people they follow and whether their account is healthy and active. The scoring takes into account a user’s public data, like their posts’ content, likes, social graph, and more, as well as their involvement with the larger ATProto ecosystem. Users can also see where they rank on a Leaderboard that spans Bluesky at the AT Protocol network.
The service offered by Mutesky lets you bulk manage Bluesky mutes — meaning topics you don’t want to see as part of the Bluesky experience — in one convenient dashboard. Here, you can control whether or not you want to see things like political discourse, social issues, global affairs, religion, healthcare, and others when browsing the Bluesky social network. You can even more narrowly dig into niche topics within categories to specify which subtopics should be muted.
An open social alternative to a discussion forum site like Reddit, AzSky is powered by Bluesky. Users can join communities and engage in discussions with others who share their interests across topics like news, technology, gaming, movies, books, and more. You can also track “trending” conversations taking place across Bluesky from AzSky, which are those discussions that have hundreds (or even thousands) of comments.
This silly social app, Flushes, lets you post a “flush” when you’re in the bathroom, which is published on AT Proto. Why a decentralized bathroom app? Why not!
This was originally published on March 30 and will be updated regularly.
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X’s plan to boost revenue by selling off dormant usernames on its service is starting to shape up. According to recent changes found in X’s web application, the company is setting up a “handle inquiry” process that will allow Verified Organizations — companies and other organizations that already have a $1,000 per month X subscription — to bid on abandoned X handles. Those bids will start at $10,000 and may range to over $500,000, according to an FAQ discovered in the web app.
The updates were first spotted by reverse engineer Nima Owji, who told TechCrunch that he saw the changes to the web app go live on Wednesday. The website where organizations could acquire a handle is not yet live to the public, however.
The idea of making money by selling handles is something X floated before under Elon Musk’s ownership. The New York Times reported in January 2023 that the company, then still called Twitter, was considering setting up an online auction process for bidding on handles.
Musk has also long supported the idea of freeing up X’s namespace for active users, having already purged a number of inactive accounts on the service back in May 2023.
In November 2023, Forbes also reported that X was actively soliciting buyers who may be interested in acquiring unused handles, but a formal announcement was not made. X’s documentation on inactive accounts states that the company “cannot release inactive usernames at this time,” though there have been some reports of people buying usernames on X outside of an official process.
By allowing companies to officially buy their desired usernames, X could generate another revenue stream outside of subscriptions, ads, and developer access. The move could also encourage other X users to keep posting if they don’t want their handle to become dormant and then go up for sale.
So far, the FAQ details the answers to a handful of common questions X users may have about the process, including how to start a handle inquiry, what the sales process is like, and how the transfer will work.
As the still-nonpublic website explains, interested users will work with an automated support bot to start an inquiry about a username they want to purchase, and X will respond if the handle is available within three business days. After the handle is purchased, it will be transferred to the new owner within one or two days, or it can be moved to another account the business already owns, the FAQ states.
Discounts may also be available for those purchasing multiple handles at once, depending on the number and size of the quote, the website notes.
X was asked for comment on its plans around handles but did not respond.
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When OpenAI debuted its image-generation feature in ChatGPT last week, social media exploded when users realized that they could make AI-generated images that looked like something out of an animated film from Studio Ghibli. Fans hoped that Studio Ghibli mastermind Hayao Miyazaki would take a stand, but the 84-year-old animator has remained silent. In the Ghibli fan subreddit, however, fans are enforcing a long-standing ban against AI art.
“I just noticed about a dozen different ‘BAN AI NOW’ posts here seemingly spurred on by an influx of AI Ghibli art on other sites,” a moderator posted to the Ghibli subreddit last week. “We don’t allow AI art. We haven’t allowed it basically since it became a thing.”
These fans don’t see the AI-generated copies as an homage to the iconic artist. Rather, these generative AI models are trained on copyrighted images from artists like Miyazaki, who never gave OpenAI or any of its competitors permission to use their work as such.
This issue is one that’s impacted other creators and writers, too. The New York Times and other publishers have sued OpenAI, alleging that the company used its copyrighted materials to train its models without payment or consent. Similar complaints have been filed against Meta and Midjourney.
The Ghibli situation struck a particularly strong nerve among fans since the studio’s mastermind, Hayao Miyazaki, has been vocal about his hatred for AI-generated artwork.
“I can’t watch this stuff and find it interesting,” Miyazaki said in documentary footage from 2016 in which he was shown AI-generated 3D animation. “Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is whatsoever. I am utterly disgusted.”
People have also generated portraits in the style of Pixar movies and Dr. Seuss illustrations. Even the White House’s X account posted a Ghibli-style image, crudely mocking a woman for crying while being handcuffed by ICE.
As more “Ghiblified” images spread across the internet, fans of the legendary 84-year-old animator resurfaced his commentary to discourage others from imitating his work, but the damage had already been done. Of course, not all of these are Ghibli-style images, but the popularity of these images has stretched the AI company’s capacity.
OpenAI’s Brad Lightcap, who oversees day-to-day operations at the company, said that over 130 million users have generated more than 700 million images with this new ChatGPT feature.
“The range of visual creativity has been extremely inspiring,” Lightcap wrote.
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As YouTube Shorts continues to compete with TikTok, the platform is announcing new upcoming features to help creators publish engaging short-form videos.
Creators will get access to an improved video editor, the ability to generate AI stickers, a feature that syncs content to the beat of a song, enhanced templates, and more.
The launch of the new tools comes just days before the April 5 TikTok ban deadline. Given the timing of the announcement, YouTube is likely looking to court creators to its platform and capitalize on the potential void left by TikTok if it faces a ban in the United States.
YouTube says the new and improved video editor will allow users to easily adjust the timing of each clip, move or remove clips to create a rough version, add music or timed text, and preview their Short to make sure it tells the story the way they want it to. YouTube plans to roll out additional editing updates in the future.
The company notes that an improved video editor has been a top request from Shorts creators.
TikTok is known for having robust editing tools, so it makes sense for YouTube to give its creators access to more of the same tools. Plus, the launch of the improved video editor is significant, as Meta is said to be weeks away from releasing an “Edits” app that is said to rival ByteDance’s CapCut.
As for the new AI Stickers, creators will be able to generate custom stickers using a simple text prompt. In an example shared by YouTube, a user can generate an AI sticker of “a strong plant with muscles.”
YouTube Shorts will also roll out the ability for creators to add image stickers to their videos. For example, creators will be able to share different options for outfit inspiration by uploading photos from their camera roll and turning them into image stickers.
In addition, creators will soon be able to pick a song and have their clips automatically aligned with the music’s rhythm. Before this, creators would have had to manually sync clips to songs.
The feature appears to be similar to CapCut’s “Beats” tool, which automatically syncs music to clips.
YouTube is also going to improve templates, as users will be able to pull photos from their gallery and use them in templates. The company also plans to add effects within templates. Given the popularity of effects on TikTok, it makes sense for YouTube Shorts to explore them as well, especially since they can sometimes create trends.
The new features are expected to roll out in the coming months.
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