(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 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.”
Bluesky shares some characteristics with another Twitter alternative, Threads, established by Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms Inc. in 2023. Bluesky may be better than Threads for users interested in politics; Threads has said it won’t recommend political content to people unless they deliberately ask to see it, an effort to reduce the spread of controversial posts on the service.
How many people are on Bluesky?
Bluesky had around 22 million total users as of late November, adding more than 8 million new sign-ups following the US election on Nov. 5. It’s still relatively small compared to X and Threads, but it’s growing quickly: Bluesky had only 10 million total users in September. Starting one week after the election, Bluesky has ranked among the top three “free” apps in Apple’s US App Store almost every day. It’s also seen an influx of celebrity users, including actors Mark Hamill and Ben Stiller, and author Stephen King.
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.
Dorsey’s project morphed into a formal company called Bluesky in 2021, which created the 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 $15 million in a funding round in October. The post-election growth has prompted even more interest from investors looking to back to the company, Axios reported.
What technology does Bluesky use?
Bluesky’s open-source AT Protocol can be used by other people 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.
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. X has been accused of allowing racism, hate speech and misinformation to proliferate unchecked since Musk arrived and slashed its content moderation teams. 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. Bluesky is significantly smaller than X, which is having its own usage spike, according to Musk. And other competitors appear to be having their own election bump, with Threads saying it had more than 35 million signups in the month of November. Other social networking services such as 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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