One night in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, a felting artisan ended her day with a prayer. May our partners have good health. May they be ambitious, and successful, and may their businesses grow. The next morning, sisters-in-law Chinara Makashova and Nazgul Esenbaeva, and the people they worked with awoke to what seemed like a miracle: Shopify orders. So many Shopify orders.
Technology
Wool, water, Wi-Fi: Modernizing an ancient business at the final frontiers of e-commerce
They got to work. It felt like everything was falling into place: The company they had built from scratch was exporting felted slippers and artisan products to wholesale partners around the globe. And with help from USAID’s green business initiative in Central Asia, they were expanding their production abilities — and finally building their own modern, direct-to-consumer web store: one with the payment processing and data security infrastructure to help them reach customers directly.
But just as their new ecommerce infrastructure was coming together, the USAID funding vanished around the world — leaving them with a $35,000 funding gap. In so many places, the internet makes building a retail business easy — but in the world’s most land-locked country, with a banking system bogged down by sanctions against one neighbor and cybersecurity barriers against another, growth is a balancing act. Tumar’s path has been unconventional: bringing together nomadic tradition, Soviet legacy, and digital commerce to build a modern business, even when the infrastructure around them can’t keep up. Their first challenge: scaling a 5,000-year-old process that had never before been automated, with machines salvaged from the collapse of the USSR.
For centuries, Kyrgyz nomads on the Eurasian steppe drove their flocks from the low green valleys to the snowy slopes of the Tian Shan mountains, sheared their sheeps’ lush thick wool, and used heat, water, and friction to felt it into the durable shyrdak blankets that lined their yurts. Felt may have been the world’s first-ever textile. It was strong, dense, and durable. It could stand up to bitter cold or pouring rain. But between industrialization and the pressure, under Soviet rule, to abandon the past, Kyrgyz wet felting by hand almost disappeared. In fact this particular felting tradition was just a few farflung elders and hidden artifacts from extinction in the 1990s when some women in Bishkek, graduating from university into a post-Soviet world, began to seek out, re-learn, and revive the practice.
Makashova and Esenbaeva — with help from Makashova’s aunt Roza — learned how to use this millennia-old technique of wet felting with Kyrgyz wool to make things like shyrdaks and kalpak hats. In 1998, they started Tumar Art Group. Within a decade, Tumar had its first wholesale partner. And in recent years, USAID-funded programs helped them share their knowledge with women throughout Central Asia, reviving an ancient industry while spurring a new economy.
On the felt factory floor
Today, Tumar’s Bishkek facility is a labyrinth of sunlit workspaces, some with pastel floor tiles, some with geraniums lining the windowsills, one full of old jelly jars and coffee containers full of pigments and dyes. Workers pull giant, fluffy sheets of “pre-felt” off the conveyor belt of a wool carding machine. On a switchboard that looks like a Cold War rocket launch interface, they toggle dials that are labeled in Chinese, with hand-scrawled Cyrillic translations taped above.
These days, modern, commercial felting operations use a water-free needle-felting process, Makashova explained. Some incorporate glue or synthetic fibers. But not here. Tumar’s engineering team hacked their way to avoiding all that, leveraging their custom manufacturing line to automate processes like carding (aligning the fibers), or kneading, done with a one-of-a-kind “beating machine.”
“We take care to keep our traditional technology of wet felting,” Makashova said. But “for the most complicated process of wet pressing, modern engineering does not offer machines, so we have to look for old Soviet schemes, adapt and make these machines ourselves — or restore old machines.”
To make one of their most in-demand products — felted slippers — they needed a heavy metal tub to hold water and heat, and flywheels that could apply consistent rhythmic pressure and agitation to the wool. An old Soviet wool milling machine would have done the trick. “Unfortunately,” Makashova said, “they are almost impossible to find.”
With scant financial resources and an economy in upheaval, it was hard for this start-up to find, acquire, and ship in the machines they needed — in part because some of those machines didn’t yet exist: Kyrgyz hand felting had never before been automated. Makashova’s brother, an automotive engineer, organized the group’s own small “mechanization base,” collecting, first, Soviet tools and metalworking machines. Gradually, the company acquired textile processing equipment from Italy, China, Russia, and beyond, salvaging, renovating, retrofitting, and Frankensteining equipment to bring automation to an ancient craft.
Then, more good fortune arrived: A Tumar associate found a tub and flywheels in “a heap of scrap metal intended for recycling,” Makashova recalled. The company’s engineering group restored the find, “and now we can’t imagine our work without these machines.”
As of the 2010s, Tumar was working more with wholesale partners around the world while continuing to make goods for their brick-and-mortar shop of the same name, on a sunny corner in central Bishkek, popular with tourists and expats.
By the late 2010s, the global market for sustainable, natural materials was on an upswing, and travelers coming through their Bishkek shop took notice, including a guy in Richmond, Virginia named Barclay Saul. He loved that you could see Tumar’s entire supply chain, from field to factory, in a day, and in the exploding landscape of eco-conscious “Instagram brands,” he and a partner decided to launch Kyrgies out of a Richmond storage space, and sell the slippers online.
In spring of 2020, when tourism came to a halt, Tumar’s bustling retail business did too. Saul’s bet was a smart one: Kyrgies’ sales surged. People were staying home — and they wanted the right footwear for it. But they also wanted natural materials. “This business has taught me simply that [people want to] buy less stuff, quality stuff,” Kyrgies CEO Saul said. Kyrgies’ ecommerce business has continued to double year over year, enabling Tumar to double its staff and scale their output fourfold in the past five years.
This is the dream, Chinara said — but there’s one dream they still haven’t been able to manifest in the reality of today’s complicated internet: their own web store. The sale of artisan goods out of the Bishkek storefront is still, in some ways, the most important thing they do, said Makashova. It’s just a quarter of their revenue, but it’s a source for their product innovation. Thanks to platforms like Shopify, Kyrgies could launch their retail business in the US virtually overnight. But for a Kyrgyzstan-based business, online retail is no easy feat. The cost of shipping by air or land from the heart of Central Asia is the first hurdle. And another thing: There’s no PayPal here. Payment systems, Makashova said, are “a very, very big problem.”
Still today, Kyrgyzstan’s banking system is closely tied to Russia’s, and Western sanctions put in place after Putin’s invasion of Crimea have made cross-border transactions tricky. Some Kyrgyz banks, wary of being blacklisted, have cut off connections to Russian-linked payment systems, and that’s left companies like Tumar in a lurch. Another wrinkle: With growing concerns over China’s access to US consumer data, platforms handling payments in countries near China — neighboring Kyrgyzstan included — are subject to serious cybersecurity hurdles. And if a payment doesn’t go through on the first attempt, often, there won’t be a second attempt. “We’ve lost many customers for this reason,” Esenbaeva said.
All this to say, Tumar’s old-school web store quickly became obsolete. They figured out they needed to rebuild their site with ISO 27001-compliant back-end infrastructure: encryption protocols, secure socket layers, and a payments gateway capable of navigating cross-border compliance from Central Asia, all in hopes of keeping international customers (and the cybersecurity platforms that protect them) from getting scared out of the purchase flow.
As of January 2025, the entire plan was in place. A new website was launched. They had the money in hand to build out the direct-sale infrastructure. But there was just one catch: The project was being financed by a green business grant from the now gutted and shuttered USAID.
Tumar is hoping that enrolling in Estonia’s e-Residency program will pull their plans for modern, global payment processing out of a death spiral — but they still have about a $35,000 international funding gap to fill with USAID’s dissolution.
On the outskirts of Bishkek, at Tumar’s new wool processing facility, the “break yurt” feels like a step back in time. Workers drink black tea and snack on puffy little squares of fried dough with clotted cream and jam. Right next door, a more modern scene unfolds: sun pours through the oculus in the yurt’s tunduk dome roof onto architectural drawings unfurled on a conference table. Shelves of binders and spiral-bound notebooks lean against the richly colored, shyrdak-lined walls. A flat-bed all-in-one printer, reminiscent of HP circa 2010 — whirs. A similar-vintage, thick-bezeled, matte-black computer monitor and keyboard set-up peeks out from piles of print-outs, a glue stick, an old calculator.
At this new factory, some 100 tons per year of course wool that would have been burned as waste is instead being cleaned and processed. More USAID green business support had been on the way — and it would’ve helped Tumar double the output. Now, they may be on their way to accomplishing that on their own, expanding their product line to include, for example, an entirely biodegradable slipper, and soundproofing and insulation panels (both “no-waste” products made, in part, from slipper scraps). And, importantly to the founders, reliable stocks of high quality raw material that other businesses across the region haven’t previously had access to. Across a stretch of grass from the side-by-side yurts, the warehouse is abuzz with activity.
“We want to open [up] possibilities [for] artisans to get new direct online orders,” and to learn how to maintain quality and consistency as output increases, Makashova said. And the only way they can do it is to keep growing.
There are workshops and small businesses across Central Asia waiting for this raw material to come their way, Esenbaeva said. That means—aside from their own production of felted goods—they’re needing to expand their partnerships with small, family-owned Kyrgyz sheep farms, and increase their capacity for processing wholesale felt. To make it all happen, they’ll need to keep collecting—and building—machines. Esenbaeva laughed, quoting Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “We are responsible for those we tame.”
Technology
A warrantless wiretap law is about to expire — but surveillance networks aren’t actually ‘going dark’
Congress has failed to pass a three-week extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), with the House voting 218-198 against reauthorizing the controversial warrantless wiretapping authority through July 2nd. After a short-term extension earlier this year, the spying program now appears set to lapse for at least a week. This is the nightmare scenario FISA’s proponents have been warning about — but it doesn’t actually mean the US has lost its surveillance capabilities.
Proponents of a clean extension claim a lapse will hinder intelligence agencies’ efforts to thwart potential terrorist attacks, with surveillance networks “going dark”. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) stressed the importance of reauthorizing Section 702 ahead of the World Cup. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has said even a brief lapse would be disastrous. “Democrats in the Senate are playing political games right now with the lives of Americans,” he told reporters Wednesday. “It’s a very dangerous situation.”
In March, the FISA court recertified surveillance under Section 702 until 2027. The Brennan Center for Justice notes that a lapse won’t allow telecom companies to flout requests to hand over communications information to the NSA and other spy agencies. In 2008, after Yahoo failed to comply with a Section 702 request during a lapse, the FISA court ruled that the directives issued under Section 702 are effective while the certification is in place — even in the event of a lapse.
“The phrase ‘going dark’ is significantly misleading,” Andrea Sawka Fiegl, the senior policy director for media and technology at Common Cause, said on a Tuesday press call. Fiegl added that companies don’t choose whether they participate in surveillance under Section 702. If they don’t comply after being served with a directive, they face fines starting at $250,000 a day.
“The ‘going dark’ framing is basically a pressure tactic designed to strip Congress of its leverage to negotiate reforms by creating this false binary,” Fiegl said. “There is ample time for Congress to consider and pass reforms.”
Among those reforms are a warrant requirement for queries involving US persons, including so-called “backdoor searches” in which intelligence agencies identify a foreign target with ties to a US person, and then search that person’s communications, thus granting them access to their desired US target. Reformers also want to prohibit intelligence agencies from buying Americans’ data from private brokers to get around warrant requirements.
“Every day that Section 702 is in effect without reforms is a day that Americans’ rights are under threat,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said in a statement Wednesday night, after Senate Republicans blocked his request for a five-week extension of Section 702 with new transparency requirements. “If there is going to be an extension of these authorities, there needs to be some guardrails or at least some transparency that would allow Congress and the American people to understand the abuses that have taken place and the need for reforms.”
Though President Donald Trump and Republican leaders in both chambers have called for a clean reauthorization of Section 702, there’s bipartisan appetite for reform — and a handful of Republican holdouts stand in the way of a clean reauthorization. Most Democrats — even some who have supported reauthorization in the past — have objected to a clean extension due to Trump’s appointment of Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence.
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Apple used WWDC 2026, its annual developers conference, to lay out what is coming next for your iPhone, Mac, iPad, Apple Watch and Vision Pro. This year’s keynote also carried extra weight because it marked Tim Cook’s final WWDC as Apple CEO before John Ternus takes over in September.
Still, the biggest story for users was software. Apple put Siri AI and Apple Intelligence at the center of the keynote, while also announcing iOS 27 support for older iPhones, new child safety tools, faster performance and smarter features across everyday apps.
The updates range from big changes, like Siri AI, to smaller fixes that could still make a difference. You may notice them when your phone finds a photo faster, shares a file quicker or helps clean up a weak password.
Here are the 12 biggest takeaways from Apple’s WWDC 2026 keynote.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook holds an iPhone 17 Pro and an iPhone Air during an event at the Steve Jobs Theater on Apple’s campus in Cupertino, Calif., on Sept. 9, 2025. (Manuel Orbegozo/Reuters)
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1) Siri AI is the biggest announcement
The headline from WWDC 2026 is Siri AI. Apple says it rebuilt Siri around Apple Intelligence so it can handle more complex requests and carry on longer conversations.
The new Siri still works in familiar ways, including “Hey Siri.” Apple also showed a dedicated Siri app where you can return to past conversations. That means a longer answer or planning session does not disappear after one interaction.
Siri can also sound a lot more expressive. Apple says you can customize Siri’s voice by adjusting its pace and expressivity until it feels right for you.
During the keynote, Apple showed Siri answering a question about a local concert. From there, Siri helped with tickets, created a reminder for the lottery opening and played a song from the artist.
Apple also showed Siri using what was already on the screen. In one demo, Siri identified a location along the Santa Cruz coast from an image. Then it found a friend’s address from Messages and helped create a route with a stop along the way.
In another example, Siri searched Photos for images from a recent trip. It narrowed the results to specific family members and added those photos to a shared family album.
On Mac, Apple showed Siri working inside Spotlight and context menus. Siri compared selected files, turned the information into a table and used details from Messages and Mail to help draft an email.
2) Apple Intelligence now has a Google connection
One of the most surprising moments came when Apple said it worked with Google on the next generation of Apple Foundation models.
Apple said it used technologies behind Google’s Gemini family of models to help create new models for Apple Intelligence. Those models are designed to run on-device and through Private Cloud Compute.
Apple is still presenting the experience as Apple Intelligence. Still, the Google connection is important. It shows Apple is willing to lean on outside AI technology to make its own system stronger.
Apple says the new models bring better reasoning, image understanding, speech support and image generation.
3) iOS 27 keeps older iPhones in the game
Apple confirmed that iOS 27 will support iPhone 11 and the same iPhone models as iOS 26.
That is good news if you are not rushing to buy a new phone. Some of Apple’s biggest software updates will still reach older devices.
Apple also said it brought an improved CPU scheduler to older iPhones going back to iPhone 11. That system helps your phone manage processing power as you move between tasks.
In everyday terms, Apple says older iPhones should feel more responsive. That could help when you switch apps, search for photos or use several features at once.
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4) Apple says your devices should feel faster
Apple did not spend the keynote only chasing new AI features. It also talked about speed. The company said iPhone and iPad apps can launch up to 30% faster. New photos may appear in your library up to 70% faster. AirDrop transfers may be up to 80% faster. On iPad, browsing files and moving them to an external drive may be up to five times faster.
Waiting for an app to open is annoying. So is taking a photo, then waiting for it to appear. Faster AirDrop could also make file sharing feel less clunky.
Apple also said it improved network transitions. Your iPhone should be smarter about moving between Wi-Fi and cellular. That could help in places where your phone clings to a weak Wi-Fi network, even though cellular would work better.
Apple’s WWDC 2026 keynote focused on Siri AI, Apple Intelligence and software updates coming to iPhone, Mac, iPad, Apple Watch and Vision Pro. (Cheng Xin/Getty Images)
5) Liquid Glass is getting easier to read
Apple also revisited Liquid Glass, the visual design system it introduced last year. This time, Apple said it refined Liquid Glass so that complex content behind it is easier to read. The goal is better contrast and clearer separation between controls and background content.
Apple is also adding a new slider in Settings. You can adjust Liquid Glass from ultra clear to fully tinted. That gives you more control. Some of you may like the transparent look. Others may want a stronger tint so buttons and text stand out.
On Mac, Apple is also bringing back more structure. Toolbars look more uniform. Sidebars stretch to the edge of app windows. Sidebar icons regain color. Windows also have a more consistent shape. The message is clear. Apple still likes the look of Liquid Glass, but it knows readability matters.
6) Apple is giving parents more control
Apple devoted a major part of WWDC 2026 to kids, teens and parental controls. The company says the most important first step is creating a Child Account. That account automatically turns on age-based safeguards, including adult website blocking, media limits and App Store restrictions. Apple also said parents can convert an existing account into a Child Account.
This year, Apple is adding a more guided setup process. Parents can decide which apps a child can use right away, then add more as the child is ready. In other words, a child may need Messages or school apps before they are ready for broader web access.
Apple also expanded Ask to Buy. Parents can now review app requests in Messages. A new Ask to Browse feature lets kids request permission before visiting a new website in Safari. Ask to Browse and Ask to Buy are both on by default for kids under 13. Parents can also turn them on for teens.
7) Screen Time is getting more flexible
Screen Time is getting a new look and more flexible controls. Apple says parents will see a clearer view of how kids use their devices. They can also adjust access faster.
A new Time Allowances feature gives parents suggested limits for app categories such as Entertainment, Games and Social Media. Apple says those recommendations are based on a child’s age and developed with clinical and child development experts, including the American Academy of Pediatrics. Parents can still adjust the limits themselves.
Apple also added schedules. That means parents can decide which apps are available during different parts of the day. For example, a parent could allow learning apps during school hours and entertainment apps later. Weekend settings can also be different from weekday settings. That is all very important because families do not all handle screen time the same way.
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8) Safari can organize your messy tabs
Safari is getting Apple Intelligence features that could help with one of the most common browsing problems: too many tabs. Safari can now organize open tabs into topics. If you are researching a vacation, comparing products or planning a project, Safari can group related pages together. It can also add new related tabs to a topic as you keep browsing. That could help anyone who leaves tabs open because they are afraid of losing something important.
Safari is also adding Notify Me. You can ask Safari to watch a page for a change, then close the tab. Apple gave examples like waiting for camp signups or a product to come back in stock. When Safari detects the update, it sends you a notification. That may sound small. For tab hoarders, it could be a big relief.
9) Passwords can help fix weak accounts
Apple is also bringing Apple Intelligence into the Passwords app. That could be a big help because weak and reused passwords are still one of the easiest ways for scammers to break into accounts. Passwords already warns you when a password may be weak or compromised. Now, Apple says it can help update eligible accounts to stronger passwords with one tap.
That is the part that may get more people to act. Most of us know we should clean up old passwords. The hassle is getting it done. You have to visit the site, sign in, hunt for the account settings and create a better password.
Apple says Passwords can use Safari to handle supported password changes for you. That could make it much easier to fix risky accounts before they become a problem. Just do not treat it like a set-it-and-forget-it tool. After changing a password, make sure it is saved correctly and know where to find it later.
10) Visual Intelligence is spreading across Apple devices
Visual Intelligence is becoming a bigger part of Apple’s AI plan. On iPhone, Apple is adding a Siri mode inside the Camera app. You can point your camera at something, tap the shutter button and let Siri respond to what it sees.
Apple showed examples like getting nutritional insights from food and helping split a restaurant bill with Apple Cash.
On Mac, Visual Intelligence works through a keyboard shortcut. You can select something on your display, then ask Siri about it.
On iPad, Visual Intelligence connects with screenshots. On Vision Pro, Apple showed Siri answering questions about objects someone was looking at.
This could make Apple Intelligence feel more useful because it connects to what is in front of you. It is not limited to typing a question into a chat window.
Apple CEO Tim Cook delivered his final WWDC keynote as Apple CEO, announcing smarter features included in the tech company’s next big software update. (Josh Edelson / AFP via Getty Images)
11) Apple Intelligence is moving deeper into everyday apps
Apple also showed how Apple Intelligence will show up inside the apps you already use. This is where the update could become more useful in everyday life. Instead of making you open a separate AI tool, Apple is building these features into places like Messages, Mail, Calendar, Phone, Home and Shortcuts. In Messages, Apple says it can understand the context of a conversation and offer one-tap suggestions. For example, it could help create a reminder or note from a message. If someone asks for photos, Messages can help find the right shots by recognizing keywords, locations and people in your library. Mail is getting more capable suggestions, too. Apple says those suggestions will be based on the email you are reading and can help you take action with your favorite apps, including third-party apps.
Calendar is also getting a more natural way to add events. You can type what you want in plain language, and Calendar can fill in details as you go. Apple showed it identifying a contact, adding a location and creating a title. It can also adjust a recurring event when you describe the change. The Phone app may get one of the more useful upgrades. With Call Context, your iPhone can surface helpful details when you call a business. Apple gave the example of calling an airline and having your confirmation code appear from Mail when the call starts. Apple says the feature looks at who you are calling, not what you are saying, and runs entirely on your device.
The Home app is getting smarter about notifications and cameras. Apple says it can understand related accessory alerts as one activity, so you get one notification that keeps updating. For compatible cameras, the Home app can also summarize recorded clips, pull up related footage and let you search by what was captured. Shortcuts may become less intimidating, too. Instead of building an automation step by step, you can describe what you want. Apple showed an example where Shortcuts could message a partner with an ETA when someone leaves work. That is the bigger point here. Apple Intelligence is not only about Siri answering questions. Apple wants it to handle small tasks that usually require digging, tapping or searching inside the apps people already use.
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12) Photos and image creation are getting AI upgrades
Apple also announced several visual creation features. Image Playground is getting a major upgrade with more powerful image models. Apple says it can create higher-quality images in many styles, including photorealistic images. It can also use people from your Photos library, create images in different dimensions and help make Messages backgrounds, contact posters and Lock Screen wallpapers.
Apple also said you can refine images by describing changes. You can touch part of an image, then move it, resize it or add details. Photos is getting its own AI tools. Apple said Clean Up is improving. It also announced Extend, which can expand a photo beyond its original frame. Another feature, Spatial Reframing, lets you adjust the framing of a photo after you take it.
That could be very useful when a photo is close to perfect, but the edges feel off. These features show where Apple is headed. Your photo library is becoming more editable and easier to search with help from Apple Intelligence.
Important limits to know
Siri AI will not arrive for everyone at the same time. Apple said Siri AI will be available in beta later this year. Developers can try it first. It starts in English, with more languages to follow. Apple also said Siri AI will not initially be available in the EU on iOS and iPadOS. In China, Siri AI and other new Apple Intelligence features will not be available while Apple works through regulatory requirements.
Some Apple Intelligence features will also have daily usage limits. That includes image generation and other features that rely on Apple’s server-based models. Apple says people with most iCloud+ subscription plans will get increased access. While some features may depend on region, language, device support and usage limits.
Other WWDC 2026 updates worth noting
Apple also announced several smaller updates that may be useful.
- Shared Albums can now include contributions from friends on Android or Windows. They also support full-resolution sharing.
- The Health app is adding support for perimenopause and menopause. It can notify people when cycle patterns may suggest perimenopause. It also adds symptom logging and educational information.
- AirPods are getting custom EQ so you can personalize their sound.
- Apple Vision Pro can turn panoramas into spatial scenes with depth and realism. You can also use those panoramas as your environment.
- Maps is improving Flyover with sharper detail using aerial imagery and vision intelligence models.
These may not be the headline features. Still, they could end up being the updates some of you use most.
What this means for you
Apple is trying to make AI feel like part of your device instead of another app you need to open. That means Siri could search your photos, understand messages, draft emails, compare files, summarize camera clips and help you act inside apps. Safari could organize tabs. Passwords could fix weak accounts. Calendar could understand a normal sentence. Shortcuts could become easier for people who never wanted to build automations. That sounds convenient. It also requires trust.
Apple says its approach is privacy-first. The company says Apple Intelligence uses on-device processing and Private Cloud Compute, so your data is only used to complete your request. Apple also says outside experts can verify those privacy promises. Still, you should pay attention to the features you enable. AI becomes more useful when it understands your personal context. That same access makes it more important to know what your device can search and use. The promise is less friction. The question is how much access you are comfortable giving.
Kurt’s key takeaways
Apple’s WWDC 2026 keynote felt like a reset for Siri and Apple Intelligence. Apple is trying to turn Siri into a more useful assistant that can understand what is on your screen and help inside the apps you already use. I also like that Apple focused on everyday frustrations, from faster apps and better AirDrop to smarter search, stronger passwords and improved parental controls. Still, Siri AI has to prove itself outside a keynote demo. Some features will have limits, and some regions will have delays. To me, Apple is finally saying it is serious about AI. Now it has to prove it on the devices people already own.
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Bluesky will be getting “communities,” which will function as smaller spaces where you can “go deeper and hang out with people who care about the same stuff” sometime this year, according to head of product Alex Benzer. They will be built on the decentralized AT Protocol that underpins Bluesky, with Benzer saying that “it’s a new structure for everyone” that’s part of the “Atmosphere” (a shorthand for the AT Protocol ecosystem).
Benzer listed out a “few ideas we have in mind so far” in a thread. “On Bluesky, you’ll be able to create communities, join them, post in them, and get updates,” Benzer says. “The core features on Bluesky stay simple. The magic comes from communities also existing on the open web. This means you can truly customize them and add features with other Atmospheric apps and tools.”
Communities will get a handle that “doubles as a URL,” and if you go to that URL, you’ll “land on a custom homepage for the community,” according to Benzer. “Builders can also host a completely custom experience there instead.” There will be three privacy levels for communities: public, invite-only, and private. And each community would have its own feed, Benzer says.
Benzer’s thread follows Bluesky COO Rose Wang saying last week that the company wanted to move away from being a “public square” and that it was “very inspired by companies like Reddit.” Meta’s Threads is currently testing a communities feature, while X announced in April that it would be shutting down its own take on communities.
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