Jack Dorsey has released BitChat, a decentralised P2P text messaging network that works over low energy Bluetooth.

I’ve downloaded it because I think this kind of thing is potentially useful in emergency scenarios (power cuts etc.) or things like festivals or conventions where local network infrastructure isn’t capable of handling the increased traffic. It is also probably good for people attending protests where governments might shut down network infrastructure, but I have never attended a protest like that before and have no current plans to.

Resolves YES if I receive a message via BitChat that I consider meaningful or informative. As I’m sole arbiter of what is or is not meaningful I will not be betting.

Meaningful is hard to pin down, but I would say that so far I have done a test message to my wife’s phone and that was not meaningful. If I tell a friend about it and they send me a test message, that is also not meaningful. If they then did drive-by spamming that would also not be meaningful. Meaningful would include potentially actionable information.

I will not be trying to make BitChat my default comms app or anything like that- I will only be firing outgoing messages if I suspect that my defaults of WhatsApp / iMessage are unlikely to be successful.

At market start I know there’s a few events in my calendar for the next year where this could potentially be useful, and I will be mentioning the app to some people attending those events. I’d put starting odds at somewhere like 30%.

If it helps you calibrate, I live in the suburbs in the UK. Power cuts do happen from time to time where I live.