what is our “moat” on atproto even? what keeps people using a specific atproto app vs a fully compatible other app?

the universal app is technocratic & soulless without the contextual/communal/artistic apps where the actual socializing happens & all those apps are confusing & overwhelming without the universal app to bind them together idk curious your thoughts?

Some thoughts on why ATProto is so exciting from the perspective of what it could unlock software dev wise.

the open ecosystem for atproto makes it super easy for one developer to build a compelling and feature rich application in their free time that cannot possibly be maintained by one developer in their free time

one thing I really like about atproto is that it provides the infrastructure needed to make open source user apps that actually fucking sync data across devices sorry but the average random hobbyist is absolutely not going to run a user account server for their homebrew todo list app

some thoughts on atproto as a post-app paradigm

The future of atproto lies in bespoke AppViews: highly tailored features that seamlessly integrate with and elevate existing network-wide behaviors. Due to that, I am incredibly energized by the strategic innovations emerging from SkyBeMoreBlue and BlueSky Radio.

individual atproto uis are already remixing data from different apps. so the concept of an "app" blends — each product is a prism over the shared ecosystem. and if nothing except authorship is firmly gluing different pieces, could an application be glued together from different authors' pieces?

There are two theories-of-change emerging: displace vs. integrate They are by no means mutually exclusive, but much more effort has gone into spinning up brand new atproto apps with the goal to displace existing apps than has gone into embedding the protocol into every nook and cranny of the web.

the point of atproto is to make locked-open apps. apps which are constrained such that they cannot be e.g. bought by billionaires and ruined. yes, doing non-atproto things "enables app developers to do more". yes, non-atproto is "more intuitive" and "it sucks" when you hit atproto's limits.

There are many things being built on atproto. Many of them won’t get adopted or thrive. And yes, many are built without user research. It’s OK? Don’t use things you don’t want to. Promote things you like. And build something yourself if you feel like it. Do it the way YOU want it to be.

difficult to imagine atproto apps building to significant revenue in a world where you can just clone any given app in an afternoon & still access the backing data

Frankly atproto is a great technology that just has yet to really be successfully productized. A few orgs are putting real work into that productization now but only time will tell if it succeeds.

difficult to imagine atproto apps building to significant revenue in a world where you can just clone any given app in an afternoon & still access the backing data

Hot take but I think it’s problematic for atproto that lots of developers i see talking about making stuff focus mostly on things absolutely no end user gives a shit about to fuel their protocols and architecture fetish, and it’s a failure there isn’t another app with like 100k+ users active even.

Every lexicon, every "app" on ATProto is a "yes and" waiting for your contribution to the vision. We're all first party developers.