Acorn Launches Platform for Organizations to Build Custom Online Communities

Acorn launched a platform for organizations and creators to build online communities, TechCrunch reported. The platform uses the AT Protocol technology that powers Bluesky, allowing communities to build homepages, create starter packs for new members, and customize feeds and moderation tools.

Acorn’s platform comes from Blacksky, a company that builds a decentralized social media toolkit around the AT Protocol, which was developed by Bluesky’s team.

The AT Protocol is used by Bluesky and other open social apps including Flashes, Spark, Skylight, Surf, Streamplace, and Leaflet. Blacksky’s focus has been on building tools for a safer online space for the Black Twitter community, including forking Bluesky, building custom moderation services, and creating its own implementation of the AT Protocol.

X announced it was shutting down its Communities feature, TechCrunch reported.

Acorn includes tools to onboard new members, customize feeds, configure and run moderation services, and track community growth through analytics. Acorn allows communities to create starter packs with suggested follows for newcomers and provides reputation systems using custom badges and awards.

Acorn provides tools for policing bots and trolls and allows communities to define moderation policies.

Acorn provides tools to manage reporting flow, take down accounts, ban accounts, or remove posts. Acorn allows community creators to build feeds focused on specific topics and create tabs for announcements, events, or resources. Acorn’s analytics track member growth, feed activity, and engagement patterns.

Communities can deploy Acorn’s tools on their own domain, with an average customer price of $100 to $150 per month. Acorn will move to a tiered SaaS model that scales with community size and tooling required. Acorn is used by AT Protocol-based communities Latinsky and Medsky, as well as by a filmmaker community called The Invite.

Acorn is in active discussions with other media companies and nonprofits. The name Acorn is inspired by the community in Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable of the Sower’ published in 1993. Rishi Balakrishnan is Acorn’s Lead Software Engineer.

” Rishi Balakrishnan stated: “We didn’t plan to build out the full infrastructure stack we have now — a stack that provides complete independence of Bluesky. Each step was adaptive and based on community need.

” The report came from TechCrunch reporter Sarah Perez, who has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. T. across banking, retail, and software industries.

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