Is the grass greener on the other side? We're not so sure, but the sky is certainly bluer. It's almost two years since Elon Musk bought Twitter, now X, and people have started decamping to alternative platforms. Mastodon, Post, Pebble (which has already shut up shop) and Spill have been touted as potential alternatives, but few aside from Meta's Threads have come anywhere near the pace of growth Bluesky has enjoyed.

Although it was still invite-only for nearly a year, Bluesky opened to everyone in February 2024 and quickly added nearly 800,000 users over one day. And as of October 2024, Bluesky boasts over 10 million users users following an influx of users after X was banned in Brazil and another influx in users following an updated X policy that helped the app soar into the top 5 apps in the U.S. App Store. The number is quite impressive, but the network has much ground to cover in order to compare with Threads' 175 million users within a year from the launch.

What is Bluesky?
Bluesky is a decentralized social app developed by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey as an idea parallel to Twitter. The social network comes with a user interface close to that of Twitter with algorithmic choice, a federated design and community-specific moderation.

Bluesky is building this on an open source framework built in-house, the AT Protocol, meaning people outside of the company have transparency into how it's built and what is being developed.

Then, of course, there was the project launched by Dorsey himself, Bluesky, all the way back in 2019 when he was still running the show at Twitter. At the time he explained that Twitter would fund a "small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers" tasked with working on a decentralized standard for social media, with the intention being that Twitter itself would eventually adopt the standard. That was, however before Elon Musk acquired the platform, so Bluesky has nothing to do with Twitter.

As of May 2024, Dorsey no longer serves on the Bluesky board of directors. In late 2021, Bluesky became an independent public benefit corporation led by CEO Jay Graber.

How do you use Bluesky?
Signing up gets you a handle, represented as @username.bsky.social, and also an optional display name, which shows more prominently in bold text. If you have a mind for it, you can turn a domain name you own into your username -- so, for example, I'm @amanda.omg.lol on Bluesky.

The app itself works pretty much like a minimalistic Twitter-you can click on a plus button to compose a post of 256 characters, and posts themselves can include photos. Posts themselves can be replied to, retweeted, liked, and from a three-dot menu, reported, shared via the iOS Share Sheet to other apps, or copied as text.

You can find and follow others, and see their posts in your "Home" feed. The original Bluesky app had a "What's Hot" feed that brought popular posts to the surface. This has been replaced by an algorithmic and personalized "Discover" feed that surfaces more than just trending content.

To help new users get started, Bluesky includes a "Starter Pack" feature. This curates for them a list of people and custom feeds to follow to discover interesting content right from the get-go.
User profiles contain features you'd expect: a profile pic, background, bio, metrics and how many people they're following. Profile feeds are divided into two sections, like with Twitter: posts and posts & replies.

There's also a "Discover" tab at the bottom middle of the app's nav, which shows more "who to follow" suggestions and a running feed of just posted Bluesky updates.

Who's on Bluesky?
By July 2023's opening week, when Threads debuted on Instagram, Bluesky had exceeded one million downloads worldwide across iOS and Android. News organizations such as Bloomberg, The Washington Post and Engadget have moved over to Bluesky. Blutesky also opened up, heads of state since August 2024 were finally allowed to sign and join the service for the first time.

Does Bluesky work exactly like X?
In many ways, yes. Until recently, Bluesky did not have DMs like X, but that has since been implemented. However, DMs in Bluesky are one-to-one, so no group messages for now. The company has stated it is interested in working on something similar to X's Community Notes feature. Last, X does not use a decentralized protocol such as ActivityPub or AT.

By October 2024, Elon Musk revealed that the block functionality in X would be different from when it had been in the past. This new block functionality allows blocked users you have view your posts and your profile, but still, they could not like or comment on your posts. Some users declare this update to be a safety measure, so to avoid this, some users have surged into signing up for Bluesky because its block feature is more traditional.

Although Bluesky was initially kicked out as a company project born of Jack Dorsey's mind in 2019, then when he was the CEO of Twitter, it has since its launch in 2021 been an independent company.

Is Bluesky free?
Yes, and now open to the public.

How does Bluesky make money?
Bluesky aims to find another way to sustain its network, apart from the means of advertising, so that it may remain free to end users. On July 5, 2023, Bluesky announced further seed-round funding and a paid service that offers custom domains for users who desire a unique domain to be their handle on the service. It has also indicated that it does not want to "require selling user data for ads" to make a buck off its platform.

Is Bluesky decentralized?
Yes. Bluesky's development team is working on the decentralized AT Protocol, upon which Bluesky was built. In beta, users can only join the bsky.social network, but Bluesky plans to be federated, meaning that endless individually operated communities can exist within the open source network. For example, if an outside developer wanted to build his/her new social app with the use of the AT Protocol, a user of Bluesky would therefore be able to jump over to that new app and port over his/her existing followers, handle and data.

You'll always have the freedom to choose-and to exit-instead of being held to the whims of private companies or black box algorithms. And wherever you go, your friends and relationships will be there too, a Bluesky blog post explained.
Is Bluesky safe?
In October 2023, Bluesky added email verification to enhance account security and authentication in the network. This is one crucial step forward in making Bluesky a more legitimate competitor against larger networks such as X, which has well-developed security controls. In December 2023, Bluesky undid a change it had intended to make, where users' posts would be publicly viewable on the web after users complained.

Is Bluesky customizable?
Yes. In May 2023, Bluesky launched custom algorithms, which it terms "custom feeds." Custom feeds allow users to follow many different algorithms, which publish various types of posts a user might want to see. Users can pin custom feeds and these will appear at the top of their timeline as separate tabs to select from. The feeds you pin or save are located in the "My Feeds" menu in the app's sidebar.

In March 2024, the company launched "AT Protocol Grants," a new initiative which will be awarding modest grants to developers for growth and customization purposes. One such recipient, for instance, is a tool called SkyFeed, a custom tool that allows any individual to build their feeds with a graphical interface.
Yes. Bluesky launched to Android users on April 20 and was first launched to iOS users in late February. Users may access Bluesky at the web, here. 
How does Bluesky handle misinformation?
After an October 2023 update, the app will now warn users of deceiving links by flagging them. If links shared within users' posts do not match the text, the app will alert the user to a "possibly misleading" message to warn them that they might be going somewhere they do not want to go.

Did Bluesky have any controversies?
Bluesky has long fought the battles of moderation since its first launch. The app has been criticized for not doing enough to protect its marginalized users and for lack of moderation when it comes to racist content. After one controversy surrounding the app that tolerated racial slurs in user account handles, an effort at frustration posting strike was put forward by some of its frustrated users who threatened not to use the platform until it made provisions for flagging slurs and other offensive terms when used as usernames.

Which moderation features are happening in Bluesky?
A lot of moderation updates, the Bluesky Safety account reported last December.

Bluesky is introducing "more advanced automated tooling" designed to catch content violating its Community Guidelines for human moderation on the app.

Additionally, moderation features, just like on X, which were introduced by Bluesky, have started with the features of user lists and moderation lists. The latter are used for muting or blocking many users at once. Limitation of the people who can reply to posts is also under development.

Some Bluesky users are still clamoring for the ability to make their accounts private, which they say they need more desperately now that Bluesky announced it would launch a public web interface.

In March 2024, the company rolled out Ozone, a tool enabling users to build and operate their own independent moderation services, granting users "unparalleled control" over their social media experience.

What are the differences between Bluesky and Mastodon?
While the architectures of Mastodon and Bluesky are functionally similar, many of its users have found Bluesky far more intuitive and Mastodon coming off as inaccessible: There's no easy way to pick which instance to join when signing up for Mastodon, and longtime users are very defensive about their established posting norms that can make it intimidating to join into the conversation. To remain competitive, Mastodon recently simplified its sign-up flow, so mastodon.social is now the default server for new users.

However, federation launch will make it work more like Mastodon in that users will be able to choose which servers to join and transfer their accounts around as they wish.

Who owns Bluesky?
Funded by Jack Dorsey, Jack is not involved in day-to-day development. In fact, he no longer sits on the company's board. The CEO of Bluesky is Jay Graber, who did a stint as a software engineer for the cryptocurrency Zcash before founding the event-planning site called Happening.