Currently, Bluesky gains one million new users every day.
Maybe you’ve recently seen the word “Bluesky” in your social media feeds and wondered what people are talking about.
It is an alternative platform to X (formerly Twitter), owned by businessman Elon Musk, and its icon is very similar to that of the old Twitter.
Bluesky (a name meaning “blue sky”) is growing rapidly and currently gains around a million new users per day.
In Brazil, a million users migrated to the platform shortly after the impasse culminated in X’s ban in the country in late August.
Globally, the platform had 16.7 million users when this report was written, but this number will likely be out of date by the time you read this.
After all, what is Bluesky? And why do so many people join this social network?
What is BlueSky
Bluesky describes itself as “a social network as it should be”, although it is similar to other platforms.
At first glance, nothing in particular catches your attention. A bar on the left shows everything you might expect: search, notifications, home page, and so on.
Users of the platform can post, comment, repost and like their favorite content. Publications must be short (with a maximum limit of 300 characters).
Simply put, it looks like what X looked like when it was still known as Twitter.
The main difference is that Bluesky is decentralized, which basically means that users can host their data on servers that are not owned by the company.
In other words, instead of just having a specific account with the Bluesky name, people can (if they want) sign up using an account they own.
But it’s worth noting that the vast majority of users don’t do this, and a new member will likely have “.bsky.social” at the end of their username.
Who owns Bluesky?
Considering how much it resembles the old Twitter, it should come as no surprise to learn that its creator is Jack Dorsey, the same founder of the iconic blue bird social network.
Bluesky was created by Dorsey in 2019. At the time it was an internal project within Twitter, but in 2021 it became an independent platform.
He also once said that he wanted Bluesky to be a decentralized version of Twitter that wasn’t owned by a single person or entity.
But Dorsey is no longer part of the team behind the platform and left the company’s board of directors in May 2024.
And in September he deleted his account completely.
It is currently operated as a public benefit corporation by Jay Graber, the company’s chief executive officer, and is predominantly owned by him.
Because it is gaining popularity
Bluesky has been around since 2019, but was invite-only until February of this year.
This allowed the developers to iron out any issues behind the scenes in an effort to stabilize it before opening the doors to the general public.
The plan worked, in a way. But the influx of new users was so significant in November that there continue to be problems with system instability.
When the then Twitter was sold to Elon Musk in October 2022, many users began abandoning the platform and migrating to other similar networks, such as Bluesky.
It is no coincidence that the number of new Bluesky users skyrocketed following Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections on November 5.
Musk was a big supporter of Trump on the campaign trail and will be heavily involved in his administration. The president-elect announced that the billionaire will head the Department of Government Efficiency, a new body dedicated to reducing government spending.
Inevitably, this led to a political divide, with some people abandoning the X in protest. Additionally, since Musk took control of X, there have been many complaints about the content served by the platform’s algorithm.
British newspaper The Guardian recently announced that it had decided to stop posting about X because it has become “a toxic media platform.”
Meanwhile, the Bluesky app continues to see significant downloads around the world and was the most downloaded free app on the UK Apple Store last Thursday (11/14).
Several celebrities, such as actors Ben Stiller, Jamie Lee Curtis and Patton Oswalt and pop singer Lizzo, have announced that they will join the platform and limit their use of X or, in some cases, abandon the social network altogether.
But this growth, while significant, will have to continue for a long time until Bluesky becomes a serious competitor to match X.
OX does not share its statistics, but it is believed to have hundreds of millions of users. Previously, Elon Musk said the platform had 250 million daily users.
How does Bluesky make money?
This is the question of millions. Literally.
Bluesky started with funding from investors and venture capital firms and has raised tens of millions of dollars through these means.
But with so many new users, you’ll have to find a way to pay the bills.
In Twitter’s heyday, the majority of the platform’s revenue came from advertising.
Bluesky said he wants to avoid that. Instead, the company said it will continue to explore the possibility of offering paid services, such as getting people to pay for custom domains for their usernames.
This may seem complicated, but it basically boils down to the fact that a person’s username is even more personalized. For example, this could mean that my username — @twgerken.bsky.social — could, in the future, have a more official name, such as @twgerken.bbc.co.uk.
Proponents of this idea say that it works as a form of verification, as the organization that owns the domain, in this case the BBC, would have to authorize its use.
If Bluesky owners want to continue to avoid advertising, it may be inevitable to explore more comprehensive options, such as offering paid subscriptions, to maintain the operation.
But it’s actually not uncommon for tech startups to not make much money.
Twitter itself, before being bought by Musk in 2022, turned a profit only twice in its eight years as a publicly traded company.
And we all know how that ended. The world’s richest man paid investors $44 billion for the privilege of owning the platform.
For now, Bluesky’s future remains open, but if it continues to grow, anything is possible.
Source: Terra
Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.
