Skylight, a startup taking over TikTok with a extra open various, is launching its cell app to the general public on Tuesday after simply 10 weeks of energetic improvement. The app, which is backed by Mark Cuban and others, is now one in every of many to construct on high of the AT Protocol — the identical expertise that underpins the social community Bluesky and a rising variety of different apps.
Developed by co-founders Tori White (CEO) and Reed Hermeyer (CTO), Skylight provides a short-form video app expertise with many acquainted options, together with an in-app video editor; the power to remark, like, and share movies; arrange your individual consumer profile; and observe others.
As a result of it’s additionally constructed on the AT Protocol (or “ATProto” for brief), customers will instantly be tapped into Bluesky’s community of over 33.8 million customers. Which means movies posted on Skylight may be seen and engaged with by customers on Bluesky and different ATProto-based apps, just like the extra photo-centric app Flashes, for instance.
The corporate is funded by a pre-seed spherical from Cuban, who stated earlier this 12 months that he wished to fund a TikTok various constructed on the AT Protocol. Leslie Feinzaig’s Graham & Walker Enterprise Fund additionally invested.
White, who was a journey influencer and is now a self-taught software program developer dwelling in Seattle, says she and co-founder Hermeyer have been impressed to create Skylight after they first heard that TikTok was getting banned within the U.S.
In preparation for the ban, which is presently on pause, White had backed up her TikTok movies. However she nonetheless frightened about shedding entry to her neighborhood and feedback. She and Hermeyer had already been taking part in round with ATProto and noticed the potential.
“The first thing that interested us about ATProto was that Bluesky was not failing,” Hermeyer instructed TechCrunch at the ATmosphere Convention in Seattle in March. “We didn’t see the ‘fail whale,’” he stated, a reference to the graphic that appeared in Twitter’s early days when the app was always crashing. “That made us feel comfortable about the underlying technology.”
Hermeyer and White quickly realized this was a perfect time to construct a brand new social app on the protocol that may very well be “ban-proof.”
Tapping into her influencer background, White started documenting Skylight’s improvement on TikTok, which helped carry publicity to the product and construct a following of probably customers.
“We started with distribution,” White defined. “I actually made a video before we ever wrote a line of code for this … [so] everyone can follow our journey as we build,” she instructed TechCrunch on the convention. “We were like, oh my gosh, we are building this thing that we think is so cool, but no one cares yet. So we have to build a way to tell people about it so that they would care, because we know people need it,” she stated.
As we speak, White’s @buildwithtori TikTok profile has practically 50,000 followers, a lot of which became early testers.
Like Bluesky, Skylight helps video uploads of as much as three minutes in size, a latest improve from the one-minute-long movies supported beforehand. However White sees Skylight turning into greater than only a decentralized TikTok clone.
She hints that Skylight sooner or later will permit customers to customise their feed, together with by using new gestures past swiping and scrolling.
Different options within the works embrace help for sounds, duets, stitching, bookmarks, and playlists.
The app is in beta on the Google Play Retailer and is now out there publicly on Apple’s App Retailer after preliminary testing.
