🦋 Bluesky Social

Flashes, an Instagram alternative built on top of the Bluesky social network, is now opening its doors to beta testers. Announced just weeks ago, the app offers people a means of exiting Meta’s social networking empire for a more open alternative, while also attracting new users who may not have been interested in using Bluesky’s official app, which works more like X.

Built by Berlin-based developer Sebastian Vogelsang, Flashes runs on the same underlying protocol that powers Bluesky, the AT Protocol (or atproto for short). As a Bluesky client, it supports photo posts of up to four images and videos of up to one minute in length. Users who post on Flashes will also have their posts appear on Bluesky, and Bluesky users’ comments on those posts will also appear on Flashes.

To work, Flashes filters Bluesky’s timeline for posts with photos and videos. Users can also switch between their own Bluesky feeds within Flashes to see different views of the social network.

As Vogelsang explained in January, he hopes Flashes will pull in newcomers to Bluesky who may have never seen themselves as a “Twitter person.”