Despite experiencing outages, Bluesky attracts nearly 800K new users on its first day of public availability

After launching last year in an invite-only beta, the decentralized, open-source social app Bluesky has now opened to the public and has experienced a considerable surge in user sign-ups. In just one day, Bluesky gained almost 800,000 new users, pushing the platform towards 4 million total sign-ups.

According to public data, Bluesky’s unique user count nearly doubled on the day it opened up to the public.

While Mastodon, its main federated competitor, currently has more users, the rapid growth of Bluesky demonstrates its potential. Contextually, when Elon Musk finalized the purchase of Twitter in October 2022, Mastodon had about 400,000 users, as compared to its current tally of 8.7 million.

However, Bluesky’s launch was not without bumps. Many of the platform’s user-generated, custom algorithmic feeds experienced an outage, which CEO Jay Graber confirmed was likely due to the spike in activity.

Despite these initial problems, user sentiment on Bluesky remains positive, with influential online figure – Dril, giving the app approval after its public debut. With its decentralized concept and growing user base, Bluesky holds appeal for users seeking alternatives to dominant platforms owned by corporations like Meta.