The Great X-odus is underway. You may have noticed the word “Bluesky” appearing frequently on your social media feeds and wondered what it is all about. Bluesky is an alternative platform to Elon Musk’s X, and in terms of its color and logo, it bears a striking resemblance.
I recently signed up for Bluesky to get a feel for the app and see how it differs from X. To my surprise, it feels almost identical to X, as if you haven’t left the platform at all; the features and user experience are remarkably similar. Bluesky is experiencing explosive growth, currently attracting around one million new sign-ups per day. At the time of writing, it had 18.5 million users, but that number is likely to be outdated by the time you read this.
The Twitter-like service, which serves as an alternative to Elon Musk’s X, has seen rapid growth in the days following the U.S. presidential election. Many users are leaving X due to its increasing right-wing leanings and Musk’s campaigning for Trump. Others are dissatisfied with changes Musk has implemented, such as modifications to how blocks work and the use of their content on X to train AI.
If Bluesky’s growth continues, it may begin to impact X. According to analytics provider Similarweb, X has experienced the highest number of account deactivations since Musk acquired the company, formerly known as Twitter. Similarweb’s findings are based on the number of visits to the confirmation webpage that appears after users indicate they want to deactivate their X accounts.
But what exactly is Bluesky, why is it proving so popular, and why are so many people joining?
What is Bluesky?
Bluesky describes itself as “social media as it should be,” even though it bears a resemblance to other platforms. Visually, it features a familiar layout with a bar on the left side of the page displaying options such as search, notifications, and a homepage. Users on the platform can post, comment, repost, and like their favorite content.
In essence, it looks much like how X, formerly known as Twitter, used to look.
The main difference is that Bluesky is decentralized—a complex term that essentially means users can host their data on servers other than those owned by the company. This allows users to sign up using an account they own, rather than being restricted to a specific account tied to Bluesky.
However, it’s important to note that the vast majority of users don’t take advantage of this feature. Most new users will likely have “.bsky.social” at the end of their username.
How did it start out and who owns it?
If Bluesky feels a lot like X to you, there’s a good reason for that. It was created by Jack Dorsey, the former head of Twitter. Dorsey once expressed his vision for Bluesky to be a decentralized version of Twitter, free from ownership by any single person or entity.
However, Dorsey is no longer involved with the project. He stepped down from the board in May 2024 and deleted his account entirely in September. Bluesky is now run and predominantly owned by Chief Executive Jay Graber as a U.S. public benefit corporation.
How is it any different to X?
Bluesky offers users the opportunity to more thoroughly moderate their experience. This includes the ability to choose the algorithm that determines what content they see, allowing for the creation of custom feeds—such as a feed for mutual followers, cat photos, or specific interests.
Additionally, Bluesky allows users to use website addresses as their handles, which could serve as a verification tool for journalists, athletes, and public figures by incorporating a company’s website into their handle.
Many of the features on Bluesky are similar to those on X. Users can make text-based posts with a 256-character limit (known as “skeets”), which can also include images and videos. They can re-post, like other posts, and reply to other users.
Users can follow others to curate their own timeline and send direct messages, much like on X.
Bluesky has a moderation team to enforce community guidelines, which prohibit promoting “hate or extremist conduct”—a common criticism of X under Musk. It also allows users to utilize a collaborative moderation tool called Ozone to manage communities on the platform.
How does Bluesky deal with trolls?
While X seems to be loosening regulations on the user experience—recently changing its block function to allow users to see posts from public accounts that have blocked them—Bluesky emphasizes its “anti-toxicity” features. These features include allowing users to detach their original posts from someone else’s quote post, thereby preventing unwanted interactions.
Why are people leaving X for Bluesky?
The platform has previously gained from the dissatisfaction with X and its billionaire owner, Elon Musk, who is closely associated with US president-elect Donald Trump’s successful election campaign.
Bluesky reported gaining 3 million new users in the week following X’s suspension in Brazil in September, and an additional 1.2 million users in the two days after X announced it would allow users to view posts from people who had blocked them.
X users have also reported an increase in bots, making the site challenging to use.
How does Bluesky make money?
It’s the million-dollar question, quite literally.
Bluesky initially received funding from investors and venture capital firms, raising tens of millions of dollars through these means. However, with a rapidly growing user base, it will need to find a sustainable way to cover its expenses. During Twitter’s prime, the platform generated the majority of its revenue through advertising.
Bluesky, however, aims to avoid this route. Instead, it plans to explore paid services, such as allowing users to pay for custom domains in their usernames. While this may sound complex, it essentially means that a user’s username can be even more personalized.
For example, my username—@twgerken.bsky.social—could potentially become more official-sounding in the future, such as @twgerken.bbc.co.uk.
Proponents of this idea argue that it also serves as a form of verification, as the organization owning the website would need to approve its use.
If Bluesky’s owners continue to steer clear of advertising, they may need to consider other options, such as subscription features, to keep the platform running. However, it’s not uncommon for tech startups to struggle with profitability.
In fact, Twitter, before being acquired by Musk in 2022, only turned a profit twice in its eight years as a publicly traded company. And we all know how that ended—a massive payday for investors when the world’s richest man paid $44 billion (£34.7 billion) to own it.
For now, the future of Bluesky remains uncertain, but with its continued growth, anything is possible.
Conclusion
Although Bluesky’s user base is rapidly growing, it still lags far behind X. Liu told Forbes that Bluesky has about 14.5 million total users, while X reported in March that approximately 250 million people use its platform daily. It remains to be seen how many users from the African region will embrace this new social network, as statistics are still emerging.
