Skylight, a startup taking over TikTok with a extra open various, is launching its cellular 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 among many to construct on prime of the AT Protocol — the identical know-how 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 presents 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.
Because 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. That means movies posted on Skylight might 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 firm is funded by a pre-seed spherical from Cuban, who stated earlier this 12 months that he needed to fund a TikTok various constructed on the AT Protocol. Leslie Feinzaig’s Graham & Walker Venture Fund additionally invested.
White, who was a journey influencer and is now a self-taught software program developer residing in Seattle, says she and co-founder Hermeyer had been impressed to create Skylight once 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. But she nonetheless nervous about dropping entry to her neighborhood and feedback. She and Hermeyer had already been taking part in round with ATProto and noticed the potential.
“The very first thing that us about ATProto was that Bluesky was not failing,” Hermeyer instructed TechCrunch on the ATmosphere Conference 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 continually crashing. “That made us really feel snug in regards to the underlying know-how.”
Hermeyer and White quickly realized this was a really perfect time to construct a brand new social app on the protocol that could possibly be “ban-proof.”
Tapping into her influencer background, White started documenting Skylight’s improvement on TikTok, which helped convey publicity to the product and construct a following of probably customers.
“We began with distribution,” White defined. “I truly made a video earlier than we ever wrote a line of code for this … [so] everybody can observe our journey as we construct,” she instructed TechCrunch on the convention. “We had been like, oh my gosh, we’re constructing this factor that we predict is so cool, however nobody cares but. So we’ve got to construct a strategy to inform individuals about it in order that they would care, as a result of we all know individuals want it,” she stated.
Today, White’s @buildwithtori TikTok profile has almost 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 enhance from the one-minute-long movies supported beforehand. But White sees Skylight turning into greater than only a decentralized TikTok clone.
She hints that Skylight sooner or later will enable customers to customise their feed, together with by using new gestures past swiping and scrolling.
Other options within the works embody assist for sounds, duets, stitching, bookmarks, and playlists.
The app is in beta on the Google Play Store and is now out there publicly on Apple’s App Store after preliminary testing.
