(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump’s US election victory — and Elon Musk’s role in helping to get him elected — has sent some users of Musk’s social networking service X searching for alternatives. Musk has spent months pushing Trump’s agenda to his more than 200 million followers on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, and has been taking a virtual victory lap since Trump’s win. X’s move toward the political right has turned some users away, and one of the key beneficiaries of this social media migration has been Bluesky, a relatively new social network that looks and feels a lot like X.
What is Bluesky and how does it work?
Bluesky is a social media service with a lot of the same features you might find on X, Facebook and Instagram. Users can create a profile, follow other accounts, like and re-share posts, and send private messages. Bluesky users have the option to see several different feeds based on their interests. They can see traditional feeds made up of posts from the people they choose to follow, for example, or scroll through feeds focused on certain topics, such as science, gardening or “cat pics.”
How many people are on Bluesky?
Bluesky has around 15 million total users and has added more than 1.25 million new sign-ups since the US election on Nov. 5. It’s still relatively small compared to competitors such as X and Meta’s Threads, but it’s growing quickly; Bluesky had only 10 million total users in September. One week after the election, it was the top ranked “free” app in Apple’s App Store.
What company is behind Bluesky?
Bluesky started as more of a project than a company. In late 2019, then-Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey announced Bluesky, which was funded by Twitter, as an independent effort to build a new social networking protocol. Dorsey didn’t like that the major social networks — including his own — were all owned and controlled by private companies. A social networking protocol, by contrast, would serve as a technology layer that anyone could build a network on top of, theoretically creating more competition and user freedom. Email is an example of an internet protocol — anyone can make an email service, and send emails that can be received by people who use other providers.
That project morphed into a formal company called Bluesky in 2021, which created a social networking protocol and the Bluesky social networking service that was built on top of it. Twitter stopped financing Bluesky once Musk bought the company in late 2022, but Bluesky raised a $15 million funding round in October.
Bluesky is ‘decentralized.’ What does that mean?
Bluesky is built on the AT Protocol, an open-source technology that other people can use as a framework to build their own social media projects. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, social networks built on the same open protocol can interact with one another. That means users of Bluesky can engage with users on other networks also built on the AT Protocol. If a Bluesky user wants to leave to another network on the protocol, for example, that person can bring their followers, posts and other data along with them.
Bluesky built the AT Protocol that it now uses, and there have been more than 100 other apps built on top of the AT Protocol since its debut. Initially, Dorsey had hoped that Twitter would also join this protocol, but those plans fell through once Musk acquired the company.
Isn’t Bluesky invite-only? How do users sign-up?
Bluesky is available to download on both Apple Inc.’s App Store and the Google Play store for Android users. Bluesky was initially invite-only when it first launched — executives said that was to keep the service from crashing or experiencing technical glitches, not to be exclusive — but it has since opened the network to anybody and you no longer need a code to join.
Is Jack Dorsey still involved in Bluesky?
No, Dorsey left the Bluesky board last year. He has since criticized Bluesky for becoming a more traditional company instead of just creating a technology protocol. Bluesky “is literally repeating all the mistakes we made as a company,” he said during an interview in May 2024. “This is not a protocol that’s truly decentralized. It’s another app. It’s another app that’s just kind of following in Twitter’s footsteps, but for a different part of the population.”
Why are people leaving X?
Bluesky is full of new users introducing themselves, and in many cases, saying goodbye to X at the same time. There is no single explanation for why people are leaving, but a common thread seems to be that people have been turned off by Musk’s effort to aggressively turn his account (and by association, X) into a digital billboard for Trump. Musk spent months promoting Trump’s agenda ahead of the election and has spent considerable time with the President-elect advising him on policy and cabinet appointments. For those who aren’t a fan of Musk, or Trump, the idea of supporting X has fallen out of favor, too.
So is Bluesky the next Twitter?
It’s too soon to say, but it has a long way to go. Not only is Bluesky significantly smaller than X, which is having its own usage spike, Musk says, but other competitors have also emerged. Threads, another X clone from Meta Platforms Inc., has 275 million monthly users in less than 18 months, and may soon start running ads. Other social networking services like Mastodon have also had brief moments of popularity before falling out of the conversation. Bluesky is having a moment, but it’s unclear if the company will be able to sustain it.
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