There’s a brand new Bluesky app within the works from a preferred developer of iOS purposes. Tapbots, the corporate behind the favored Mastodon consumer Ivory, born out of its earlier efforts with Tweetbot (RIP), is readying a brand new app referred to as Phoenix, designed for Bluesky’s rising social community of over 32 million customers.
In a put up on Bluesky, the corporate shared its web site teasing the brand new app, which is anticipated to launch someday later this summer time.
On its web site, Tapbots clarified that its work on a Bluesky consumer doesn’t imply it’s abandoning its efforts within the fediverse, often known as the open social net. Nevertheless, Ivory’s improvement will quickly sluggish as the brand new efforts are underway.
Ivory, which launched in 2023, introduced again Tweetbot’s appear and feel and several other of its options to supply an alternative choice to Mastodon’s official social app, an open supply, decentralized different to bigger platforms like X. As a federated app, Ivory is built-in with ActivityPub, the protocol powering a bunch of federated social apps together with not solely Mastodon, but in addition PeerTube, Pixelfed, Meta’s Threads, Flipboard, and others.
Bluesky, in the meantime, is constructed on a special protocol, the AT Protocol (or atproto for brief).
Since Twitter’s acquisition by Elon Musk and its transformation into X, many former Twitter customers have moved on to different networks, together with Mastodon and Bluesky. For an indie operation like Tapbots, that meant its buyer base was cut up between two companies, making it tougher to generate income with only one app.
“… For us to proceed to thrive as an organization, we should help each,” Tapbots shared on its web site. “Sadly, we are able to’t survive on Mastodon alone.”
The corporate additionally explains that it determined to launch a devoted app for Bluesky customers as a substitute of mixing the 2 networks into one app as a result of this is able to provide customers a greater expertise. Those that need to keep a presence on each social networks will have the ability to make the most of a deliberate cross-posting characteristic, it added.
Sadly for Mastodon customers, work on Ivory might want to sluggish because the group works to launch Phoenix.
“It will be a lie if we stated Ivory could be in full improvement whereas we try to get Phoenix up and working,” the web site explains. “Nevertheless, we didn’t need to begin Phoenix improvement till after we launched Ivory v2.3. As soon as Phoenix is out the door, improvement will occur concurrently and each apps will get all the large enhancements we now have deliberate all through the apps.”
Information of Phoenix’s launch was first reported by MacStories.
Although the corporate has not introduced Phoenix’s monetization technique, it can doubtless be a subscription mannequin much like Ivory’s — a free app with in-app purchases for entry to premium options. At present, Ivory is $1.99 per thirty days or $14.99 per yr.
Phoenix will enter a restricted public alpha section forward of its summer time 2025 launch.
