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More good news for those looking to move away from Meta’s ecosystem for an open-source alternative: An independent developer is developing a photo-sharing app called Bluesky. Light. The newly launched app is powered by the same technology that powers Bluesky, the AT Protocol, and was developed using code from Bluesky’s previous client, A skirt.
Once implemented, Flashes could leverage consumer demand instead of Big Tech’s social media monopoly. This has led to the creation of open source software, based on the likes of Mastodon and Bluesky, among others, including the recently released Pixelfed mobile appsbuilt on Mastodon’s ActivityPub protocol. Also, among other things, what is causing TikTok users to change Chinese app RedNote ahead of US TikTok ban – that is, US users are indicating that they would rather use a foreign adversary’s app than return to Meta for now.
Flashes itself was founded by Sebastian Vogelsang’s former Berlin-based app, Skeets, his first foray into consumer-facing software at the growing Internet giant, Bluesky, which is now at the top. 27.5 million users.
While Bluesky offers its official client, Skeets has differentiated itself by focusing on the needs of iPad users and the accessibility features for the blind and visually impaired, as it is one of Vogelsang’s technologies.
Late last year, Vogelsang also realized that there was potential to develop software using the same codebase that would support Bluesky users interested in visuals, such as photos and videos. Because Bluesky already supports this type of media, it was just a matter of redesigning the Skeets app so that its design and interface looked similar to other photo-sharing apps, such as Meta’s Instagram.
“I thought about the idea of having one social media image and having different apps choose whatever they want to show,” Vogelsang told TechCrunch. “It was very interesting to me, because before we had these separate networks.”
He says Flashes can help draw in new Bluesky users who haven’t joined the social network because they don’t see themselves as a “Twitter person.”
“This would give them access to the network, to the entire protocol,” Vogelsang said.
However, the developer emphasizes that Flashes is not meant to be an Instagram photo, nor will it offer all the same features.
At launch, Flashes supports four photo and video clips up to one minute in length, just like Bluesky. Users who post to Flashes will also have their posts on Bluesky and comments on those posts will come back into the app as if they were another Bluesky customer. It will also support Bluesky direct messaging.
To that end, Flashes automatically filters the time Bluesky has recorded with photos and videos. (In the future, Vogelsang also plans to add metadata to Flashes files so that Bluesky users have a way to save their feeds on the main Bluesky app so they don’t mess up the photos if that becomes a problem.)
Light didn’t take long to build because it was able to reuse existing Skeets code. The app will also sell to Skeets users, who have downloaded the app nearly 30,500 times to date.
Vogelsang says he is now working to integrate subscriptions from all of his apps so users don’t have to pay twice for basic features, such as Skeets bookmarks, graphics, mute, heavy push notifications, and other Flashes. (All these programs are free to use without registration, we should note.)
After that, Vogelsang says he wants to launch an exclusive video program, called Blue Screen.
The developer hopes to be able to introduce Flashes to the public in a few weeks with the TestFlight beta arriving before that. Interested users can follow Flashes account on Bluesky other changes.
