About six months ago, after Elon Musk took charge at Twitter and sacked most of its staff, many users went looking for alternative Twitter-like platforms.
But although networks like Mastodon and Hive Social received a bump in user numbers, none went truly mainstream. They proved either too small, too poorly managed, or too complicated to use.
Twitter, meanwhile, appears to be (still) slowly dying, with an increase in outages and bugs, the withdrawal of major news outlets, an uptick in neo-Nazis on the platform, and signs of a decline in user traffic.
Now, a new "Twitter-alternative" has emerged, backed by Jack Dorsey, who co-founded Twitter 17 years ago.
Named Bluesky, the platform looks almost exactly the same as Twitter on the outside, but with one important difference under the bonnet.
Launched on app stores in February, Bluesky at first could only be joined via invitationfrom its developers.
Two weeks ago,they opened that upsoexisting users couldissue invites. Word quickly spread. User numbers are now about 50,000, with more than a million on the waiting list.
These figures are tiny compared withTwitter's network of hundreds of millions,but the challenger has momentum, with glowing media coverage andhigh popularity rankings on the app stores.
The platformitself is almost identical in functionality to Twitter. Users can do theequivalent of post, retweet and like. The ability to send direct messages andupload videos are to be added.
Rami Mandow, an astrophysicist in Sydney, is one of the relatively few Australians who have scored an invite.
Like many, he says Bluesky reminds him of "early Twitter",full of people cracking jokes and starting quirky memes, but without the polarisation and anger that's become so common on the Musk-owned platform.
"The vibe on there is bloody fantastic," he said.
"There'snone of the trolls or the far right wing, it'sa nice group of people all interacting, sharingthe things they love doing."
The big question now is, can it last?
Part of the answer to this lies with a piece of technology that could change the way we use social media, and undermine the dominance of thebig platforms, like Facebook and Twitter.
The authenticated transfer protocolor "AT protocol" is the networking technology that powers Bluesky.
Before your eyes glaze over, think of it as a way for servers to speak to one another.
In a typical social network, this communication is controlled by a central authority, which then harvests users' data and curates what content they see.
But Bluesky is decentralised, meaning it's possible to have a social network that isn't owned by one organisation.
Such networks aren't entirely new (the Mastodon platform, for instance, is a decentralised network), but the AT protocol comes with an extra innovation.
It allows users to "port" their accounts between different platforms using the AT protocol. That is, you can create an identity for yourself in Bluesky, and then migrate that identity (including its network of followers) to any social platform that builds upon the AT protocol.
That may sound dry, but it has big implications.Since the start of social media, building a platform has meant assembling a network of users from scratch. As a result, established platforms hold an advantage over start-up competitors, as they already have the network.
For users, this has meant a lack of true choice.Want more moderation on Twitter or less video on Instagram? Tough luck. Quitting the platform would mean exiting the platform's network, and losing the profile you've created, as well as the connections you've made in that network (for example, the list of followers).
But the AT protocol decouples the social network from the social platform, allowing multiple, independentplatforms to be built upon one common network.
Each platform still hasto convince users to download their app or sign on, but the pool of potential userswill have already beencreated, through all the other platformsalready using the AT protocol.
This could threaten the dominance of the big platforms,said Daniel Angus, a professor of digital communication at Queensland University of Technology.
"Bluesky is the first app using this protocol but the idea is there'll be other apps," he said.
"The idea is that you're aunique person and should be able to maintain your own identity online which connects with people you value hearing from and value hearing from you."
Introducing users to the AT protocol, Professor Angus said, was the reason Bluesky looked so much like Twitter. It's the familiar and unthreateningon-ramp.
"It's a stripped-back version of Twitter that'sgoing to appeal to people," he said.
"It's a seamless entry into this new style protocol."
To keep the vibe "fantastic" for Rami and others on Bluesky, the platform operators need to address one of the enduring problems of large social networks: moderation.
Under the AT protocol, moderation is performed at the platform level, rather than the network one.
The idea is that AT protocol platforms that fail to properly moderate (or moderate in a way users like) will be abandonedfor their competitors.
Bluesky's strategy here is a work in progress. It says it will giveusers more control over what appears in their feeds, byallowing them to choose the algorithm that curates what they see.
It's also working on"composable moderation", which itsays will giveusers more control over what gets filtered out or labelled. Essentially, it delegates some of the decisions around what content gets labelled or blockedto users, groups of users, and third-party moderation providers.
This, too, is still being developed. For the moment, the platform is relying onautomated filtering, like other platforms.
So far, moderation hasn't been much of an issue due to low user numbers.Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says the platform won't be opened to the public until itsmoderation features are ready.
For Rami in Sydney, the hope that Bluesky will be different is shadowed bytheknowledge of how it could go wrong.This gives the current good times a bittersweet quality.
"I'm old enough to know whatwill always happen regardless of whatever platform you build or whatever tools you build," he said.
"There's always a way for nastiness to leak in and grow and fester.Once they open the gates up, there'sno way of stopping that."
For some, Bluesky's promise of change and renewal is just another example of groundlesstech hype.
Bluesky (which was originally developed by Twitter, before going independent last year) was meant to fix Twitter's mistakes. Instead, it appears to be repeating them.
Twitter became a place of violence and abusebecause of its functionality, they argue. Failurewasbaked into its design.
The metric of "likes"encourage people to post inflammatory content, which the algorithm will promote as engaging. Quote tweets encourage users to ridicule a poster before the user's own audience of followers, rather than replying to the original poster.
Those critical of Bluesky havealso pointed out that trendy socialapps quickly fade into obscurity. The internet loves novelty, but quickly tires.
Two years ago, social audio app Clubhousewas getting a lot of buzz, with an invitation-only viral marketing campaign. It's since gone into decline, and recently laid off half its workforce.
For others, the excitement around Blueskyspeaks to people's wish for a viable Twitter alternative, for a place of text-based conversation, debate, gossip, humour and ideas, without hate and abuse.
With no sign Twitter will fix its problems, that alternative will have to arrive eventually, Professor Angus said.
"As soon as a viable alternative comesalong, I do think people will be looking to leave Twitter," he said.
"There are a million social media apps developed every year, the fact we're talking about this one means they'redoing something right."
This article contains content that is only available in the web version.
More:
What is the Bluesky social media app and can it replace Elon Musk's Twitter? - ABC News