What is Bluesky? Social media platform tops 20 million users

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has kept busy since Election Day, advising President-elect Donald Trump and receiving an appointment to co-navigator a recent government efficiency percentage.

Musk has also found period to promote Trump in scores of posts on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, which he owns. But such advocacy appears to have driven some X users to seek alternatives.

One such app, Bluesky, has drawn attention as a feasible X rival and has amassed a total of 20 million users to date. Its growth accelerated in the aftermath of the election, when Bluesky added one million users in a single week.

Launched by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Bluesky has attracted some prominent users in recent days, including comedian Ben Stiller, author Stephen King, and pop star Lizzo.

Here’s what to recognize about Bluesky, and how to join:

What is Bluesky?

Bluesky is a text-oriented social media platform on which users can post messages as long as 300 characters. Like X, the messages posted on Bluesky appear on a newsfeed displayed to users. The app is available on iOS and Android.

The platform operates on an open framework, meaning that users can post their messages to a server tailored for specific interests or communities. The structure design resembles that which is used on another text-first app, Mastodon, as well as the decentralized platform Discord.

Bluesky began in 2019 as a enterprise at Twitter overseen by Dorsey, and was launched as an independent business in 2022, the year after he left Twitter.

advancement of the site started after a 2020 tweet from Dorsey announcing Twitter’s plans to pool a decentralized social media platform, Bluesky said in a blog post. The eventual leaders at Bluesky were among those who sent direct messages to Dorsey in response to his post, the blog added.

Who owns Bluesky?

The board of directors at Bluesky features Dorsey as well as Jeremie Miller, the founder in the late 1990s of a free instant messaging service called Jabber.

Bluesky’s CEO is Jay Graber, who formerly founded an events-oriented social media site called Happening and worked as a software engineer on a cryptocurrency called Zcash, according to LinkedIn. She also serves on the Bluesky board.

The business is owned by Graber as well as “the Bluesky throng,” the Bluesky website says.

While Bluesky has retained a traditional corporate structure featuring a board and chief executive, the business said it aspires to receive control of content away from a top-down entity and profit it to creators.

“Traditional social networks are often closed platforms with a central authority,” the website says. “There’s a tiny throng of people who control those companies, and they have total control over how users can use the platform and what developers can construct.”

Dorsey criticized Musk’s leadership at Twitter on Bluesky last year, saying that things “all went south” at the platform after Musk’s purchase, CNBC reported.

Is Bluesky a viable alternative to X?

The steady growth of Bluesky has made it a goal for an increasing number of celebrities, elected officials and government entities. But the platform remains much smaller than X or the Meta-owned competitor, Threads.

Bluesky boasts roughly 20 million users, which amounts to less than 10% of the 229 million daily energetic users disclosed by Twitter in a June 2022 profits update. X’s user data is no longer publicly available since Musk took the business private.

In July, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Threads had exceeded 175 million monthly energetic users.

How do you join Bluesky?

During Bluesky’s initial years, users could only join the platform if they received an invitation. The policy aimed to limit the app’s user base as it underwent testing.

In February, however, the platform made itself available to all users. Individuals or organizations can navigate to the platform and pursue instructions to make an account.