Flashes this year launched an Instagram alternative built on top of the Bluesky social network. Now available on the App Store, the app offers a different way to browse the visual posts on Bluesky. Instead of viewing them in a timeline-like feed, similar to X, the app draws inspiration from photo-based social networks, like Instagram.
What you can post
The app, built by Berlin-based developer Sebastian Vogelsang, runs on the same underlying protocol that powers Bluesky, the AT Protocol (or atproto for short). That means it will have the same requirements around posting images and videos as you’d find on Bluesky directly.
Originally, that meant support for posting up to four images and videos of one minute in length, but as of the Bluesky version 1.99 update released on March 10, users have been able to upload videos up to 3 minutes in length.
Image Credits:Flashes
How Flashes is like Instagram — and how it’s different
Flashes is somewhat similar to Instagram, as it offers a scrollable feed of photos and videos, user profiles, and even photo filters to enhance your images when posting.
Instead of having to start your network from scratch, Flashes’ users are immediately tapped into the wider Bluesky community, which now has over 37 million users. Even if not all of Bluesky’s users are on Flashes, their images and videos will be displayed in the app, as it essentially filters the Bluesky feed for visual content.
When you post on Flashes, it creates a post that appears on Bluesky as well. (For that reason, you may want to make a secondary Bluesky account if you want to keep the two networks separate.)
Image Credits:Flashes
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