Why Twitter’s vision of crypto and social media is superior to Meta’s Metaverse
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg once so of Twitter “they drove a clown car into a gold mine” – a stab at the company’s history of chaotic management and erratic decision-making. Today, however, it feels like Zuck is driving a clown car around his empty Metaverse as Twitter takes the lead in the next era of social media.
On Tuesday, a Twitter-backed crypto Skunk Works team known as Bluesky launched a website for a decentralized social media project it calls the AT (aka “@”) protocol, and announced a waiting list for a Bluesky app that would let people use it. The idea behind this is to reinvent social media so that it is not based on silos, but instead allows users to communicate across different platforms – imagine a world where you can use Instagram to send messages or photos to friends on Snapchat.
The idea of using blockchain to recreate social media as decentralized media has been bubbling up for a while. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey said in 2019 that his goal was for the company to one day become a client of the decentralized standard, and in 2021 a startup called DeSo (for “decentralized social”) raised $200 million. This summer, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried told me that he sees social media as one of three killer apps for blockchain in the near term.
Of course, it will be a tall order for something like Bluesky to mount a serious challenge to Zuckerberg’s billion-user Facebook-Instagram-WhatsApp empire. That said, the time feels right for such a challenge given the growing frustration among politicians and users alike about the control companies like Meta and Google exercise over our lives. Few predicted how social media would challenge traditional media before eating their lunch. Changes in the world of technology often happen suddenly.
There’s also the question of whether Twitter will actually follow the plan of Dorsey — who left the company last year — to pursue decentralization. Thanks to Elon Musk’s on-again, off-again takeover bids, Twitter management is in even more turmoil than usual, and it’s unclear who will take the reins next will share Dorsey’s vision. But even amid the chaos, it feels like Twitter and Bluesky are closer to redefining social media than Mark Zuckerberg is with his tightly controlled Metaverse — one that even his own executives have described as “sad” and “empty.”
Jeff John Roberts
[email protected]
@jeffjohnroberts
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