Flashes itself is based on Berlin developer Sebastian Vogelsang’s earlier app, Skeets, his initial foray into creating consumer-facing apps for the growing social network, Bluesky, which now tops 27.5 million users.
While Bluesky offers its own official mobile client, Skeets differentiated itself by focusing on the needs of iPad users as well as customized accessibility features for blind and low-vision users, as that’s one of Vogelsang’s areas of expertise.
Late last year, Vogelsang also realized there was potential to build apps using this same codebase that would cater to Bluesky users more interested in visual content, like photos and videos. Because Bluesky already supports this type of media, it was only a matter of reconfiguring the Skeets app so its design and user interface would look more similar to other photo-sharing apps, like Meta’s Instagram.