During previous weeks, the “hype” spotlight 🔦 (at least inside my small bubble) was on BlueSky.

In this issue, I want to dive deeper and share some lessons we can learn from BlueSky’s early success, how can we build so much hype for an application, and how 1 person can develop an app of this scale in just 6 months.

🤷‍♂️ BlueSky what?

BlueSky is a decentralized app, similar to Mastadon, that people actually like. It was started by the former CEO of Twitter - Jack Dorsey.

The idea behind BlueSky is to build a decentralized social network protocol. You, as a user will be able to connect to BlueSky with different providers that will implement this protocol. If you don’t like a provider, you can migrate your data to a different one. You would have much more control over what you see on your feed. I heard that you would even be able to choose from different open-sourced algorithms for your feed.

🔋 Powered by React Native and Expo

Here is the most exciting part: The BlueSky app was built:

(wait for it) ✨ by one developer (Paul)

(wait for it) ✨ in 6 months 🤯

(wait for it) ✨ using the power of React Native and Expo.

And we are not talking about 1 app. We are talking about an Android, an iOS, and a WEB app.

That shows how much power a Rockstar Developer has when empowered by the right technology.

React Native is a cross-platform UI framework that gives us the possibility to write one codebase and then run the application everywhere. Out of the box, we can run our apps on iOS and Android devices.

With the help of React Native for Web, we can use the React Dom to render React Native components in a web browser.

To go one step further, we can also build desktop applications for Windows and macOS and even Xbox using React Native for Windows + macOS.

That’s powerful. Especially for small teams that do not have the resources to invest in specialized teams for every single platform.

That’s why learning a cross-platform framework like React Native, or even that Dart thing, is a smart choice for developers that either want to build their own apps or that want to stay competitive in the job market.

😵‍💫 Building Hype 101

The application launched as an invite-only beta, and oh boy everyone went nuts about getting an invite code. I still didn’t get one 😞

We saw how powerful was the invite-only strategy for the Clubhouse (if you still remember it). And we see it again for BlueSky.

This strategy is so powerful because it targets our lizard brain 🧠. Humans tend to want way more something that they cannot have. You can see this even with kids. Try telling a kid that he cannot do something, then leave the room and see what happens.

The invite-only strategy has 2 main aspects that work together to make the offer irresistible:

• Exclusivity ✋
• Scarcity 💎

Exclusivity is used as a marketing tactic to make products more desirable. For example, luxury brands often use exclusivity to create an air of mystery and desirability around their products. By making their products difficult to obtain, they increase our desire for them. It’s almost impossible to buy a Rolex, even if you have money - that’s exclusivity.

While exclusivity works on the emotional level, scarcity is part of basic economics. When there is more demand for a limited resource - the value increases. In other words, if a lot of people want something that has limited quantity, they will be willing to pay more for it. Think about gold or even Pokemon cards.

By default, software is not scarce. But you can artificially make it scarce by offering limited amount of invite codes. That creates FOMO 😱.

If Bluesky users would have unlimited invite codes (having exclusivity but no scarcity), I’m pretty sure there would be less “hype” around it.

Make sure to take notes from successful launches and the next time you will prepare to launch your app, think how you can add some exclusivity or/and scarcity to your products.

Takeaways

So, what can we take away from the early success of BlueSky?

• Nothing is too big to be disrupted. Not even Twitter.
• Small teams and even solo developers are capable of launching big-scale apps
• Use cross-platform technologies to speed up the time to market and to target users no matter where they are (web, android, ios)
• React Native and Expo is the right choice
• Launching a successful app is not only about coding. Marketing is crucial
• Exclusivity and scarcity can help you build “hype” around your app if done correctly

What else did I miss?

🔴 Join me live

This Friday we will build the backend side of the Twitter Clone using NodeJS. It's going to be a tutorial packed with value, so set a reminder and don't miss it out 👇

🔁 In case you missed it

🔥 Press worthy

• ​React Native macOS 0.71​
• ​Examples of most common app layouts using Expo Router​
• ​Create native modules directly in your app with Expo Modules​

Did you learn something new today?

If you found this email valuable, forward it to one friend or coworker that can benefit from it as well. That would be much appreciated 🙏