Bluesky is a social app that is designed to not be controlled by a single company. We’re creating a version of social media where it’s built by many people, and it still comes together as a cohesive, easy-to-use experience. We’ve done this by building Bluesky on the AT Protocol, an open source toolbox for building social apps that can all talk to each other.

We want modern social media and public conversation online to work more like the early days of the web, when anyone could put up a blog or use RSS to subscribe to several blogs. We believe this will unlock a new era of experimentation and innovation in social media. Researchers and communities will have the ability to jump in to help solve the problems social networks currently face, and developers will be able to experiment with many new forms of interaction.

Traditional social networks are often closed platforms with a central authority. There’s a small group of people who control those companies, and they have total control over how users can use the platform and what developers can build. On these platforms, as a user, if you try to leave, you have to start over from scratch without the connections you built there or the content you made. As a developer, if you try to build a new app, you have to overcome network effects to rebuild the social graph from scratch, and if you try to build on the APIs of these companies they can cut you off and kill your company in the blink of an eye. As a creator, you might spend years building an audience only to lose access to it when the platform changes the rules on you.

Source: Bluesky Website

We are a privacy-first social network with over 20 million users worldwide and more than 700,000 interest groups that is committed to giving our users control, protecting their data and providing a great user experience. MeWe contains no ads, no targeting, and no newsfeed manipulation. It is available on iOS, Android and desktop in more than 20 languages and over 200 countries worldwide.

Our journey began in New Mexico in 2011 when co-founders Mark Weinstein and Jonathan Wolfe began dreaming of the next generation of social media. The duo were disillusioned with big-tech’s disregard for personal privacy and its willingness to target, track and sell our data. They envisioned a new experience built on safety and respect and one that would bring people together while making social networking fun again. After several years of testing and a public beta, MeWe was officially launched at the SXSW.

Interactive Media festival in 2016 where we were honored as a finalist for their ever “Innovative World Technology” award.

In the years that followed we continued to refine both our free and subscription offerings while staying true to our ethos of privacy and user control. In March 2021 long time entertainment and technology executive Jeffrey Edell was named Chairman and CEO. Under Edell’s leadership we made considerable progress in improving our user experience, growing our membership and doubling down on our privacy-first message.

In 2022, we made the strategic decision to move to the blockchain and incorporate the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP), an open internet protocol released by the Project Liberty Foundation. The foundation, launched in 2021 by Frank McCourt, and Frequency Labs, is part of the $500 million Project Liberty initiative, aimed at creating a better internet and a healthier digital ecosystem. DSNP has the potential to transform the internet by liberating social networking functionality from closed, proprietary platforms and integrating this functionality into the web itself.

With this move we put MeWe’s ethos into code and are completely solidifying our commitment to user protection and control.

We were honored again by SXSW in 2024 as a finalist for their Social Media Innovation Award and as of March have more than 670,000 active users on the blockchain, making MeWe the largest truly decentralized social network in the world.

MeWe has been supported by some of the most respected figures in tech, media/entertainment and finance, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web), Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple), Divya Narendra (co-founder of Harvard Connection), Gavin Wood / Bjorn Wagner (co-founders of Polkadot/Parity / Web3 Foundation) and Frank McCourt (founder / chairman of McCourt Global & Project Liberty).

Source: MeWe Website

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