The Tapbots experience is coming to Bluesky

The News

Tapbots, the makers of popular Mastodon client Ivory, announced that it will launch a new client called Phoenix supporting Bluesky, which recently grew to over 32 million users (MacStories / TechCrunch).

The small studio consisting of two developers and one designer, is known for its beloved Twitter client called Tweetbot, which got pulled from the App Storer after Twitter no longer offered their third-party API, which was crucial for the ones building Twitter clients. With the launch of Ivory in 2023, Tapbots brought back a lot of Tweetbots look and feel, as well as several of its features. Now, Tapbots brings its craft to Bluesky too. Both platforms have been growing steadily since Elon Musk took over Twitter, transforming it into X, and pretty much destroying the platform. Third-party clients are crucial for social networks since they often deliver an enhanced user experience, often fill gaps in platform availability, focus on offering enhanced privacy and security, and developers can innovate and experiment with new features and functionalities that the official apps may not offer.

My Thoughts

I was a huge fan of Tweetbot. I remember after signing up to Twitter and searching for an iOS app to access it on my phone, I immediately stumbled across Tweetbot rather than the official Twitter client. After years of using Tweetbot, I was forced to use the original Twitter app, after Elon Musk decided to cut off third-party API access. I immediately realized how superior the experience with Tweetbot was. As I quickly abandoned and left Twitter afterwards, finding a new space on Mastodon, I was excited to find out that Tapbots started working on Ivory shortly after they had to pull Tweetbot from the App Store. I haven't touched the original Mastodon iOS app once (no offense) since Ivory resembled so much of the look, feel, and experience that made me love Tweetbot so much.

While Mastodon has been my first choice since I left Twitter, a lot of the folks I followed stayed on Twitter, while some other moved to Bluesky, and again others joined social networks that no longer exist. As Bluesky continued to grow fast, and especially since a lot of journalists I admired and were following on Twitter, suddenly joined the platform, I made the decision to sign up for an account too. I was a bit hesitant first, because of the involvement of Jack Dorsey (although he is no longer a member of the board), and the seed round of $8M as well as the Series A of 15$M (led by a crypto-focused VC called Blockchain Capital) Bluesky raised made me wonder if this is the right platform to join and invest in by contributing through posts and being active in general. However, at least in my bubble, Bluesky became a nice extension of the social media feeds I have been browsing recently. There are not that many people who I follow on Mastodon and on Bluesky simultaneously. It pretty much feels like as if I have a quite different timeline on Bluesky compared to Mastodon. In the first place, this is heavily influenced by all the journalists I follow on Bluesky, as most of them are not on Mastodon.

The experience so far is good. I am mostly using the Bluesky iOS client, although they are already third-party clients available like Skeets or Graysky, however, I haven't looked into them yet, since I wasn't that active on Bluesky. The native client is ok, nothing special, and feels a lot like the initial Twitter app. Based on that, I am already looking forward to see how Tapbots will imagine Phoenix, if it will enhance the current experience, and what potential additional features they might build on top of it.

Well, regarding the additional features, Tapbots gave already a quick hint on their landing page for Phoenix, as they pointed out that there might be some conveniences of an app that supports multiple social media protocols, they believe the experience will be much better if they keep it separate, since they plan to provide a way to cross-post between them. Exciting.

What further stood out to me while reading through the Phoenix website, is that Tapbots stated, that only supporting Mastodon alone through a third-party client is not enough for them to survive as a company, and since Bluesky sees rapid growth it seems like a smart business move to start developing a third-party client for such a rapidly growing social network too. The only drawback of that is that Tapbots stated that they need to slow down the development of Ivory in order to work on the launch of Phoenix. Ivory v2.3 has just been pushed to users, bringing a new grouped notifications tab, mentions and notifications have been merged into a single tab, accessibility improvements, and more. However, until Phoenix will get launched, which should be around summertime according to Tapbots website, Ivory users might need to wait for additional updates and new features.

As of now, there is no information available regarding Phoenix's monetization strategy, but I agree with Sarah Perez from TechCrunch, that it will likely be a supscription model similar to Ivory's – a free app with in app purchases for access to premium features.

Conclusion

As Bluesky continues to grow, it is exciting to see developers increasingly starting to develop third-party clients. Besides Skeets and Graysky acting as third-party clients to access Bluesky in general, there are also apps like Flashes (a photo-sharing app for Bluesky), Spark (a TikTok for Bluesky), or Bluescreen (another TikTok-like client for Bluesky). So, Tapbots is entering a growing environment of creative minds building for Bluesky and the ATprotocol.

Since Tapbots is planning to open up Phoenix as a limited alpha as soon as possible, I recommend keeping an eye on their Mastodon and Bluesky accounts, which could give you the chance to grab one of the limited TestFlight spots.

Till next time! 👋‌‌‌‌

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