With great innovation comes great speculation. This must ring true for what Jack Dorsey – founder and former CEO of Twitter (now ‘X’) – as he builds his next big platform “Bluesky”. Two years since Elon Musk took over the reins of Twitter and rebranded it as X, several people have begun hunting for platforms to which they can migrate. However, given the two-sided network effect that X has fostered and mastered over the past so many years, alternatives which are as good as X are hard to find.

Jack Dorsey is creating a social media platform on the similar lines to meet the demand of social-savvy people for a new platform. And seems like a lot is cooking on the new platform that aims at bridging the gaps that existed or still exist in X. Let’s find out what the Bluesky platform holds for us.

What is Bluesky?

Bluesky started as a platform that could be joined on invite-only basis, which added an air of exclusivity to it. However, in February 2024, the company decided to open the flood gates to everyone and a torrent of 800,000 new users flowed in on a single day. Today, it commands 16 million users. It is a decentralized social app that was developed in parallel with Twitter and has almost a Twitter-like user interface with a federated design, algorithmic choice and community-specific moderation.

To ensure transparency into how Bluesky is built and is being developed further, an in-house built open-source framework “AT Protocol” has been used.

The development of Bluesky had commenced in 2019 when Jack Dorsey was the CEO of Twitter and he had assigned a small team to work on a decentralized standard for social media platform which would be adopted by Twitter later. However, before that adoption could see the light of day, Elon Musk knocked on the door of the company and made his way in as the new owner.

What propelled the growth of Bluesky?

Twitter had a big role to play in the growth of Bluesky, and not for very good reasons. There have been several policy-related changes at X, such as change to the block feature and permission to the third-party companies to train their Artificial Intelligence (AI) models on users’ posts. Basically, X allowed profiles that users block to view the users’ profile picture and posts, without the ability to interact with it – a move that has not gone down well with privacy-sensitive users. A lot of users of Twitter did not welcome these changes and therefore, made an exodus to Bluesky. Next, during the 2024 U.S. presidential election which recently concluded, several users divorced from Twitter and made their way to Bluesky, including some of the Taylor Swift fans who joined the departure.

Is the Bluesky app any different from X?

Not much. The interface features the usual profile picture, bio, background, people being followed and engagement metrics. The “Discover” tab allows users to find suggestions on who to follow in the app. Community notes, just as in X, are being implemented and direct messages (DMs) have been enabled. However, its monetization model is different from that of X.

Bluesky app does not intend to monetize user data for ads on its platform.

As a result, it depends on seed funding from investors and from a premium version of the app where users can opt for custom domains for their handles. The main point of difference lies in the decentralized AT protocol which allows existence of infinite individually operated communities within the open-source realm. That is something phenomenal.

In case someone builds a social platform using the AT protocol, Bluesky users can swiftly hop on to the new app and port their existing data, followers, and handle information.

It means people can easily migrate their followers to other platforms, rather than starting from scratch upon joining new apps. Therefore, Bluesky will never be a prison for social media users that they find difficult to escape from because of some untransferable social network they have created.

How Bluesky fights misinformation?

Fake news and misinformation have been rampant in X, which Bluesky aims to solve. In case someone shares a post with a link, Bluesky checks for the text in the link and compares it with the text of the post. In case of a mismatch, Bluesky offers a “potentially misleading’ cautionary remark to the users. Moreover, any content violating the community guidelines can be flagged using the new features that are rolling out, following which the content moderation will take a call on the persistence or suspension of the post.

How will Bluesky fare Tomorrow?

It is too early to comment on the probability of success for bluesky. However, a decentralized model for social apps is a refreshing concept in the industry where concerns regarding privacy, ethics, transparency and accountability are rampant. Bluesky does offer a number of advantages over X, yet it needs more time to command the network effects of the magnitude of X.