If you happen to’re getting bored with Instagram, a Bluesky-based different often called Flashes is now obtainable in beta.

Flashes helps posts of as much as 4 photographs and movies as much as one minute in size. Like Instagram, it’ll help direct messages, and customers will have the ability to submit photographs on Flashes and Bluesky on the similar time.

The app was introduced earlier this month and makes use of the identical primary technical framework as Bluesky, the AT Protocol, in accordance with TechCrunch, which first reported the launch. Nonetheless, although carefully built-in, it was developed by third-party Berlin-based developer Sebastian Vogelsang, slightly than Bluesky’s core group.

Flashes will filter your Bluesky newsfeed, leaving solely pictures and movies. Vogelsang advised TechCrunch he plans to roll out extra options sooner or later, together with push notifications, a number of accounts, bookmarks, and ultimately image-editing choices and help for Tales.

It’s at the moment available for obtain on iOS utilizing Apple’s TestFlight developer testing platform. It will not be all easy crusing for now; the developer posted on Bluesky about being in communication with Apple’s engineering group about fixing technical points.

The brand new app comes as Bluesky hit yet one more milestone—31 million users—as customers proceed to flee from X amid quite a few controversies. The platform expanded its person base nine times over in 2024.

Bluesky additionally introduced one other new function earlier this week, with an government telling TechCrunch it will now allow customers to restrict replies purely to customers they observe and to make this their default setting if they want.

Meta, in the meantime, can be cribbing from Bluesky; it rolled out help for custom feeds on Threads in November, and Threads customers can now make custom feeds public and observe different folks’s feeds.

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About Will McCurdy

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I’m a reporter overlaying weekend information. Earlier than becoming a member of PCMag in 2024, I picked up bylines in BBC Information, The Guardian, The Instances of London, The Each day Beast, Vice, Slate, Quick Firm, The Night Commonplace, The i, TechRadar, and Decrypt Media.

I’ve been a PC gamer because you needed to set up video games from a number of CD-ROMs by hand. As a reporter, I’m passionate in regards to the intersection of tech and human lives. I’ve coated every thing from crypto scandals to the artwork world, in addition to conspiracy theories, UK politics, and Russia and overseas affairs.

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