Yup hacks a cross-posting app for X, Threads, Bluesky and others

Image credits: Yeah

Decentralized social networks may be the future, but in the meantime, there are plenty of Twitter alternatives to follow. A new app called Yeah aims to help by providing a single place to read feeds, follow friends across services and post to a range of social apps, including Twitter/X itself, as well as Bluesky, Farcaster, Lens and Threads – well that the latter is available. with a big caution.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced last month that a Threads API was in preparation, which would allow developers to create applications connected to the Threads ecosystem. However, this API is not yet publicly available, which means Yup has come up with a workaround to support Threads.

The company told TechCrunch that the app “informally uses the internal API” used by the Threads web client, but it plans to migrate to the official API when it is released. Because of this kind of hack, being able to use Threads through Yup means having to disable Instagram. two-factor authentication (2FA) — an additional way to secure your access to the app via a login code sent by SMS or an authenticator app. TechCrunch does not I recommend you disable 2FAalthough an app to post to Threads, Twitter and Bluesky is in high demand.

That said, we still thought it was interesting to comment on the launch of Yup, as an example of the fracture in the social application ecosystem following the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, now called months, new Twitter rivals emerged. and developed, including the open source decentralized platform Mastodon And Topicswhich promises to integrate with the ActivityPub protocol which powers Mastodon and a broader “variety” of decentralized social applications.

But these aren’t the only efforts underway to rebuild the social web. Competing protocols, like the decentralized protocol Farcaster and Web3 Lensare also in the running, as is the AT protocol Since Blue sky.

Image credits: Yeah on the App Store

At launch, even Yup itself doesn’t support the entire social app ecosystem. Mastodon is notably absent as is Nostrthe decentralized protocol that powers apps like Damus and others, favored by Twitter co-founder and former CEO, now Block CEO, Jack Dorsey.

Yes, says it plans to add support for these services in the future. But currently the cross-posting app supports Twitter/X, Bluesky, Farcaster, Threads and Lens.

The co-founders of Yup Nir Kabessa And Vernon Johnson met at Columbia University where they both became involved in the web3 space and open social media.

“What we realized is one of the benefits of these new open social networks, like Bluesky, is how interoperable they are with each other and can sort of be aggregated and consolidated as a product of consumption,” explains Kabessa. “And this would not only allow users to have a more powerful consolidated experience, where all their friends are in one place, even though these platforms are very new, but it would also allow them to establish their social graphs on other platforms and protocols while continuing to use things as they normally do,” he added.

The team believes Yup could serve as a tool for consumers and creators to grow their audiences across platforms by cross-posting and engaging with open protocols, while maintaining their presence on more social apps. important ones like Twitter/X.

However, Yup’s support for X asks him to pay $5,000 per month in API fees. The company is financing this expense thanks to a $3.5 million funding round it raised a little less than two years ago. This round was led by Distributed Global with Dapper Labs (manufacturers of CryptoKitties) and other angel investors, including Miramax CEO Bill Block and BitClout founder Nader al-Naji, also participating.

Yeah, I had previously I focused on a different project around grades and rewardsbut turned to social app aggregation about a year and a half ago, we’re told.

Although some tools allow consumers to cross-post across multiple social sites, such as Fedica which supports X, Mastodon, and Bluesky, among others, there aren’t many cross-publishing tools available for X and Threads as well as the wider range of consumer-facing decentralized applications. (To be fair, we’re not sure how long Yup will be allowed to run given its hack for Threads support, but the company noted that it has yet to receive a response from Instagram. Its app also managed to gain approvals on both. App store And Google gamefor what it’s worth.)

As for the Yup app itself, the experience is everything you’d expect. After connecting your accounts, you can choose which apps you want to post to from its main “Write” screen.

Yup also supports features like search (for people, posts, and bookmarks); notifications from all your applications; and a variety of feeds, including a “For You” feed, a follow feed, and those devoted to topics like web3, AI, NFTs, music, podcasts, videos, and others. The app also offers a personalized timeline feed for each platform. In testing, however, we weren’t able to regularly update some of these feeds, even though we had our accounts connected. For this reason, we cannot recommend Yup as a dedicated navigation app.

There are other areas that will also present a challenge for Yup in the future, such as SEO or citing posts from one platform to another. We think more work will need to be done to make this a fully functional application for anything beyond cross-posting.

Still, the fact that an app like Yup has emerged is an indicator of the current situation with so many competing protocols for a decentralized social web. This doesn’t make things easier for consumers looking to move away from big tech companies or for developers – it makes things more fragmented and confusing. A decentralized social network is great in theory, but not if there are half a dozen protocols that don’t interact. Hopefully some sort of consensus will eventually be reached here.

In the meantime, we guess there’s Yup.

For now, using the app is free. A future version may offer a paid subscription to support its costs in the future.