The Berlin-based startup Periwinkle is offering a new avenue for those wanting to leave centralized social media operated by Big Tech companies. Instead of joining a decentralized, open social networking app like Mastodon or Bluesky, Periwinkle allows anyone to set up a social media account on their own domain, under their own control.
Built on top of the AT Protocol, the same open source technology that powers the X alternative Bluesky, Periwinkle aims to provide the infrastructure you need to run your own social media.
That means you can have an account on your own domain on sites like Bluesky, or a hosted social site specific to your organization or community. Periwinkle offers domains for purchase, and allows you to store your data, including posts, follows, and your user profile, on your own PDS (Personal Data Server), which is part of the AT Protocol infrastructure.
Periwinkle makes the transition easier for non-technical users or others who don’t want the headache of having to set up and maintain their own server. Once on Periwinkle, users’ servers are updated, backed up, and monitored by the company, leaving the user free to focus on posting to social media.
“We’ll be the first-to-market fully managed PDS service; there is nobody else that is doing this right now,” says Periwinkle founder Charles Blumenthal. (To be clear, there are other organizations offering alternatives to Bluesky’s PDS, like Blacksky, but its tools are focused on those who are building self-governable online communities.)
Image Credits:Periwinkle
This idea is similar to how people who want to create their own blog can choose between an easy-to-use hosted blog on WordPress.com, a DIY installation using the open source software from WordPress.org, or something in between — like a WordPress installation that’s managed by a third-party hosting provider. Periwinkle is offering the same, but for decentralized social media.
Blumenthal, a former software engineer at McKinsey, says that the idea came to him after he realized a lot of people didn’t really understand the AT Protocol and its advantages.
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