Why the move to Bluesky is more fundamental than a new flavour of social app — and what it signals about the future of the web, and the new tech such as Autonomi, being built to underpin it all.

Our Chief Strategy Officer, Jim Collinson, breaks down why protocols are at the heart of it all

Another app is having its time in the sun right now, which you'll likely have heard of… Social media alternative Bluesky is adding a million new users a day… for a variety of reasons. Perhaps it's dissatisfaction with incumbents, their product decisions, or just fresh new grass on the other side.

But either way, it highlights a long overdue switch not really between competing social products, but a move from a platform, to a broad protocol.

Finally, it's the protocol's day in the sun.

And this, when we dig a little deeper than just the headlines of the new alternative to X, it has some deep implications and some real hope for a long overdue shakeup to the entrenched fabric of the web.

But, what do we mean by protocols? And why is it such a big deal that we pay attention to them right now.

Well, If we think of the Internet itself, as a huge postal system. It allows people to send letters and parcels to each other.

This postal system if we picture it, is of course made up of physical things like roads, and trucks, and post boxes, and envelopes.

But, there are a set of rules, to how all this functions. There's an understanding of how to write an address, post code system, how to post the letter, how it will be received.

And these protocols allow for different types of packages to be delivered, and a whole number of different delivery businesses to operate and compete and coexist, but we all know how it works, and can chose one that suits our circumstances, and needs.

This is a protocol.

So now when we move from what is a closed platform like Facebook or X (not a protocol) to one which is based on an open protocol, we are moving from what is akin to a postal system that is entirely owned and controlled and run, by a single centralised corporate entity, including them owning all the roads, the post boxes, my mail, and even my address…

…to one where we all understand how things work, because it's open and transparent, and wr all agree on the rules. So if i don't like the service I got, or the delivery was late, I can just chose a different one… I don't lose my address, or contact with my friends when I do.

So this highlights what a big deal it is it move from a digital society built of platforms, to one built of protocols.

It's about competition, and choice, and control, and breaking down monopolies that can so easy manipulate and control.

It also highlights the power of protocols, and the networks that we can form from them… and how this is just the beginning of a new kind of web that we can all have a real stake in owning.

Because underneath the upper layers such as the AT protocol upon which Bluesky is built, there are new protocols forming that allow you to own and directly control the very data, the content, that makes up your online life, as well.

Bluesky as an app allows you to assemble all this data, and use it to communicate with other people, the AT protocol, provides the rules of the game for that to function and gives you the opportunity to swap out your experience and access it in a way that suits you… but new protocols such as the Autonomi protocol will allow you to own the data, and the infrastructure itself, and not need to rely on moving it between hosts, or having the rules of the game defined by amazon, or a hosting company.

Control over the experience your want to have. And explicit ownership of your own content, all powered by a new cloud that we all contribute to.

The Internet owned by us all.

Exciting times.