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Jul 6, 2023 - Economy

Twitter rival Bluesky raises $8 million in venture funding

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Illustration of the Twitter logo as a Rorschach test

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

Bluesky, a decentralized Twitter rival whose directors include Jack Dorsey, raised $8 million in seed funding led by Neo.

Why it matters: Everyone seems eager to topple Twitter, particularly as the app changes under Elon Musk's ownership, although no one has yet figured out how to eat into its network effects.

  • Meta yesterday launched its own Twitter clone, called Threads.

Backstory: Bluesky was originally incubated as a decentralization project inside of Twitter, when the social media company was still under old management. Twitter also invested $13 million into the upstart, but the two sides severed their relationship last year.

  • Neo's co-founders include Suzanne Xie, former director of product at Twitter.

More, per TechCrunch: "The decentralized social network protocol Bluesky has been developing is an alternative to ActivityPub — the protocol powering yet another decentralized Twitter rival, Mastodon, and soon, Meta's Threads."

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