Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey left the company in May 2022 amid negotiations with Elon Musk. Since then, he has been working on Bluesky - a new decentralized social network that is set to compete with Twitter.

This week, the Bluesky app was officially made available on the iOS App Store, but there is a catch: it still requires an invitation to use. Although the app is still available in beta, its arrival in the App Store indicates that a public launch may be near.

The Bluesky app was launched publicly on February 17, 2023 and some users are being invited to try it out. The Bluesky iOS app has around two thousand users. The app is not yet ranked in any Top Charts in the United States, and is not available on Google Play. The app provides a functional, if rather inexpensive, Twitter-like experience.

The app itself features a simplified user interface where you can click a plus button to create a 256-character post, which can include photos. Where Twitter asks "What's happening?", Bluesky asks "What's up?".

Bluesky has received $13 million to ensure we have the freedom and independence to get started on R&D. Former Twitter CEO @jack is on our board, & a former Twitter security engineer has joined the team. https://t.co/S8vzObfc3u

- bluesky (@bluesky) April 25, 2022

just as Twitter Inc can't tell Bluesky what to do, Bluesky can't tell Twitter what to do - esp Twitter under all-new ownership! but you can read their portability goals in posts like: https://t.co/TckO9kGsss ...

- Gordon Mohr | gojomo.eth ꧁ꙮꙮ꧂ (@gojomo) April 26, 2022

The Bluesky project, now a public benefit company, had initially been incubated at Twitter in 2019, when Jack Dorsey served as CEO. Twitter also provided its financial support for years. Although its founding was well ahead of the sale of the company to current owner Elon Musk, the two executives had most recently discussed the idea of an open source protocol on text messages before Musk's acquisition by Twitter.

Dorsey stepped down as CEO of the social network in November 2021, but remained on Twitter's board of directors until May 2022.

Shortly after stepping down as CEO, Dorsey took to Twitter to speak publicly about Bluesky, describing it as "an open, decentralized standard for social media". That discussion had taken place around the time Dorsey was sharing his thoughts on Twitter's decision to ban President Trump from its platform. Bluesky, he believed, would reduce the ability of large, centralized platforms - like Twitter - to have so much power in terms of deciding which users and communities could intervene in discourse and who would be responsible for moderating that content.

But with Musk now at the helm of Twitter, it's unclear if or how the two projects can remain intertwined. Bluesky claimed last year to have received 13 million dollars to ensure he had the freedom and independence to start R&D and noted that Jack Dorsey was on his board. He also said that Twitter's funding of Bluesky was "not subject to any conditions except one: that Bluesky should research and develop technologies that enable open, decentralized public conversation."

Today, however, Twitter has been drastically reducing its costs, including through layoffs, auctions, office closures and even not paying its bills. It would be surprising if a side project like Bluesky remained a priority.