Twitter Faces Competition from Social Media Startups Bluesky, Damus and Mammoth

Twitter has seen major changes over the past couple of months. Since Elon Musk’s takeover last October 2022, the company slashed more than half of its workers, lost over half of its 1000 paying advertisers, experienced frequent app outages, and even saw an increase in hate speech. 

These changes paved the way for other social media platforms to rise, some backed by former big tech executives. These platforms aim to give users who want to jump ship a decentralized alternative, while geared to rival the social media giant.  

Bluesky 

Bluesky officially launched in the Apple App Store as an invite-only app last week.  

It was first announced in 2019, but gained more attention last November 2021 when ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey left his post and showed support for the project, describing it as “an open decentralized standard for social media.”   

The goal of the startup is to give its users and communities more power when it comes to speech and content moderation. The new platform also houses features similar to Twitter’s—from its search functions, UI and UX design, and profile details.  

The creation of the app revolves around the company’s plans to create the Authenticated Transfer protocol, a decentralized social media protocol that allows communication between different social media networks.  

Damus 

Damus, another decentralized social media app, had officially been listed in the Apple App Store last February.  

Much like Bluesky, the experimental open platform aims to create a censorship-free global social network with no central authority to manage policies. It also prides itself on features such as end-to-end encrypted messaging, and a sign-up that does not require a user’s number, email, or name.  

Last year, Jack Dorsey gave support for the development of Damus, donating an estimated 14 BTC (or $245,000 at the time) to its parent company, Nostr. The ex-Twitter CEO also dubbed the app debut a “milestone for open protocols.” 

Nostr, Damus’s parent company, is also developing other decentralized apps, such as the Telegram-like chat platform Anigma. 

Mammoth 

Mammoth, the new Mastodon app, has already gained 10,000 downloads upon launch in the App Store. 

The new platform was built by the same developers of Aviary for Twitter, an app that had been shut down by Twitter earlier this year after Elon Musk decided it would no longer need third-party clients.  

Mammoth offers a broad set of features, including switching between Mastodon timelines, posting text, images, GIFs, and polls, sending private messages, accessing multiple accounts, and more. The free-to-use app also champions customization, allowing users to change the app’s icon and theme, allow dark mode, and undo posts.  

Other unique app features include tools for creating threads, viewing media in augmented reality (AR), sentiment analysis, and translation.  

In a blog post, the company expounded on its goals of helping Mastodon increase its user base of 10 million active users, and while it has added a paid subscription service, the use of the app will remain free. “Simply: we want to contribute to Mastodon having 10M active users, then 100M. It’s early days still, and we don’t want to do anything that slows down adoption,” the post wrote.

While these platforms offer various features, it's noteworthy that tools like AR are making their way into social networking. This trend demonstrates how AR tech companies are broadening their reach beyond gaming and entertainment into social media