What is Bluesky, and What Does it Mean for X?

Bluesky, a social media platform similar to X, has recently emerged as X’s top competitor. The app was founded in 2019 by Jack Dorsey, then-CEO of Twitter, and has been led by Jay Graber since 2021. Bluesky was invite-only until February 2023, when it finally became open to the public.

The app has over 18 million users as of November 16th, a 2 million increase since late October. Compared to X’s 600 million users, Bluesky is a long way off from competing for users with X. However, since Donald Trump’s election earlier this month, nearly 1 million people have said goodbye to X and signed up for Bluesky instead. X CEO Elon Musk was chosen by Trump to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, which likely turned people away from X. 

Bluesky is a decentralized social media platform using AT Protocol to create a more user-focused social media platform. Unlike X, which is run by a central company and focuses on using algorithms to distribute content, Bluesky gives more control to the user to moderate what they are exposed to. Also, Bluesky does not use user posts to train AI, which X does. This makes Bluesky users more comfortable using the app. 

What does a decentralized social media platform look like? Bluesky allows its users to own their accounts, meaning any content they share on their accounts is owned by them, not Bluesky. This means that users can store and manage their data on servers not owned or operated by the platform itself, offering more flexibility and control over their information.

Bluesky users can also customize their algorithms and even join community-created ones. This allows for more relatable and personalized content to be shared and limits exposure to unwanted news such as polarizing content. Overall, Bluesky’s method leads to a more enjoyable user experience than X. 

The interface of Bluesky is nearly identical to the old Twitter interface before it became X in 2022. The Bluesky interface is almost nostalgic to users, reminding them of a simpler time on social media before Elon Musk made damaging changes to the widely considered perfect app. 

In addition to being decentralized, Dorsey created the app with the intent of it not being owned by one specific individual or group. Today, Bluesky is run by Graber as a US public benefit corporation. 

With many people already leaving X for Bluesky, we can expect millions of others to jump ship and join Bluesky or Threads, a similar alternative to X and Bluesky owned by Meta. 

X remains the biggest of the three social media apps and Musk will not have to worry about losing that label for a long time. However, the emergence of Bluesky marks the first time Musk has had to deal with a real competitor since he took over in 2022. If users continue to leave X for Bluesky, we could potentially experience a new age of social media fragmentation.