Perhaps you have read the term BlueSky as of late via online media and pondered what each and every individual is going over about people! BlueSky is another option besides Elon Musk‘s social network, X (known as Twitter previously). The design and logo are similar to X, and it behaves and feels pretty much like that.
BlueSky is gaining a lot of momentum, with around 1M new signup a day! It currently boasts 7.16 million users, according to the latest data. If anything this number is already much higher by the time you are reading this, due to how fast the growth of it has been.
So what is BlueSky, and why are so many people signing up?
What is BlueSky?
BlueSky is some kind of social media. It appears like most various other systems, with a house, search, notice– door step chats and also lists. Sure, users can post, comment on and repost as well as like content — same as X.
The difference is that BlueSky is decentralized. That means users can use external data servers outside of BlueSky to host their information, so they have less constrained freedom.
For example, users can carry over their accounts from other platforms if they choose instead of being bound to a particular BlueSky account. But most users take the default option with usernames such as xyz.bsky.social.
Why is BlueSky Becoming Popular?
BlueSky is not a new app — it was announced in 2019 but remained invite-only until earlier this year. This gave developers the ability to identify bugs and establish a working foundation before making it available for public access.
In November, the U.S. elections led Donald Trump to presidency; it became widespread around that time. Some users especially left X for political reasons as Elon Musk is a great supporter of Trump. Some others walked away for the reason toxicity. As an example, the Guardian newspaper branded X a “toxic platform” and ceased publishing on it.
Stars such as Lizzo and Greg Davies, Ben Stiller, Jamie Lee Curtis and Patton Oswalt have also signed up to BlueSky. A lot of them declared they are significantly downgrading their activity at X or quitting it altogether.
Despite its fast growth, BlueSky still has a long way to go before stimulating X, which claims to have 250 million daily active users.
How Does BlueSky Make Money?
BlueSky was originally funded by small investors and venture capital firms. As the number of users grew, the company will turn its attention to other ways to earn money and pay off expenses.
Twitter profited through ads, but BlueSky has said it will not use ads. Instead, it going to provide services such as charging for taking username (ex: change @zbcheema.bsky.social to @zbcheema.bbc.co.uk for a fee). It could also be a tool for user verification as any account using such handles would require approval from the domain owner.
If BlueSky continues its no-ads approach, it could look to other ways to pay the bills — in the likely form of subscription.
Standard for new tech startups, BlueSky is not yet making much money. Twitter itself was only profitable twice in the eight years before Elon Musk purchased it in 2022.
Who Owns BlueSky?
The old code was written by Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of TwitterBlueSky. Dorsey also imagined it as an alternative Twitter, hence not controlled by a single person or company. But, he quit BlueSky’s board in May of 2024 and later erased his account in September. BlueSky is currently led by CEO Jay Graber and works as a public company in the U.S.
The Future of BlueSky
What it ends up being is anybody’s guess at this point, but with as much momentum as it’s got right now BlueSky could’ve had a serious impact on the social networking landscape here in the not too distant future. We’ll have to see if it could possibly be a true rival to X.
This is a simplified and high-level overview. If you want more explanation, then let me know!
