Bluesky Is One Of The Buzziest Apps — But What Is It?

Bluesky is a buzzy new social media app enjoying an influx of users thanks to X's continued downward spiral. The app had about 12 million users in mid-October, but has doubled that and is now careening towards 25 million users.

What exactly is it?

Most users who are familiar with the early years of Twitter see a lot of resemblance between that app and Bluesky. But there are notable differences, including a slow rollout of public accounts, its decentralized nature, open source code, and those weird ".bsky.social" endings to everybody's handles.

So let's take a look at what Bluesky is, why it's getting so popular, and what its future might be. 

Bluesky And The 'Twitter Killer' Wars

When Elon Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, it was the beginning of the end of Twitter as we know it. With all the discussions of possible "Twitter killer" apps, Musk effectively killed the app himself, rebranding it X and unleashing a slew of controversial changes. 

Several microblogging apps had already been in development well before that, but with a clear shift in Twitter's future and Musk's immediately erratic management of the app, users very publicly expressed a desire for an alternative. 

Several appeared, perhaps the most formidable being Instagram's Threads, a microblogging app that allowed users to essentially keep their Instagram following — a major point of contention for users considering whether or not to leave X behind. 

But Bluesky was always in the background with two undeniable advantages. First, Bluesky started development all the way back in 2019 — technically as a Twitter research initiative before becoming its own company in 2021. Second, Bluesky's team has more experience with microblogging and knowledge of the problem than any of the competitors. (It was founded by Jack Dorsey, the enigmatic, if not perplexing co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, but he left the board of the company in May 2024). Jay Graber has been Bluesky's CEO since 2021. She, unlike some of her contemporaries, is a software engineer by trade and was an original member of the research initiative in 2019. (By pure coincidence, her given first name "Lantian" is Mandarin for "blue sky"). 

The Backdrop Behind Bluesky's Rise

When the exodus from X first started happening in late 2022, Bluesky still wasn't taking on everyday users. In fact, Dorsey announced Bluesky had just reached its beta period in November 2022. That changed in February 2023, when the app launched an invite-only beta. By the time Bluesky officially launched to the public in February 2024, the app claimed about 3 million users. 

Meanwhile, X continues to hemorrhage both users and value. The platform had its largest loss of users yet the day after the 2024 U.S. presidential election. 

A December 2024 estimate puts X's value at around $12.3 billion, more than $30 billion less than Musk bought it for a little more than 2 years prior. Notable longtime users like author Stephen King, pundit journalist Don Lemon (who originally had a content partnership with X), and news organization The Guardian left the app just in the past few weeks. Many users went to Threads, which now claims more than 275 million monthly active users. 

Users praise Threads for being easy to use, iterating quickly, porting followers from Instagram, and being generally free from the type of toxic content that soured X, if you so choose. But users also complained of pretty obvious engagement farming posts (like accounts that just ask nothing but random questions in order to get engagement) and a seemingly unguessable algorithm that populated much of this content in your feed whether you want it or not.

During the 2024 election cycle, Threads feeds were routinely mismatched and decidedly not chronological. This moment, perhaps more than any other, proved that Threads is not yet — or may not ever be — a reliable place to follow breaking news the way Twitter used to be. To be clear, Threads has never promised to be a hub for up-to-date information, the same way Instagram never was. In fact, Instagram and Threads pretty publicly stated as much with a February 2024 update to their policy and app that allows users to actively block political content.

But users clearly crave a place where they can follow along with live events as they're happening.

Enter: Bluesky.  

Bluesky's Big Moment

Bluesky saw a massive influx of users following the election for two different primary reasons. The first is that the app feels and looks a lot like old Twitter, meaning the switch felt familiar, if not nostalgic, for holdouts who still couldn't bring themselves to leave X. 

Second, Bluesky proved to be a place where you can see updates to current events in real time. The app has a robust and open algorithm environment that allows developers etc. to create their own algorithms, known as "algorithmic choice." Heck, there's even a place where you can see the Bluesky platform's growth in real time. 

Thanks to this, Bluesky's user numbers doubled in about 6 weeks, including a huge spike in "daily active likers" since November 14, 2024. While the app's numbers still pale in comparison to platforms like X and Threads, the surge represents the most significant social media app growth since Threads launched. 

The user experience on Bluesky is familiar in many ways. Posts, unofficially dubbed "skeets" by users, appear in a chronological timeline. Users can comment, like, share, and quote share these posts, among other actions. There are hashtags, notifications, lists, and the other features we've all come to expect from social media. This familiarity has proven a boon, as new users are able to seamlessly transition to using the app.

The increase has even Threads on its heels, leading Meta to quickly implement new features that users say they love about Bluesky. That includes a "custom feeds" feature, which allows users to switch around from their typical feed to feeds that show potential topics of interest. The company also said it changed its algorithm in response to the backlash against engagement farming posts. 

The Future Of The Fledgling App

So what's up with Bluesky? Is it the real deal — and is it worth really investing your time into? Or will it become like countless other buzzy apps and essentially fade away into niche obscurity? 

There are certainly a few quirks to the platform that could prevent it from reaching mass adoption. The main one, interestingly enough, is kind of one of the original points for its creation. Most user handles right now include something that looks like .bsky.social at the end of them. That's because technically every user handle is actually a website. So every time you post, your website is essentially posting a piece of content that the platform populates. 

It's part of the open network protocol that Bluesky was built on. It's also why users can technically host their handles from their own websites. That means anybody with a website could use their own domain as their handle. (It's actually pretty cool). 

But for a lot of users right now, it just looks weird and unfamiliar. And when it comes to being a pivotal, everyday app for hundreds of millions of users, the margin of error is slim. Since its early days, Bluesky was sort of pitched as the potential "future" of social networking. Heck, even Threads subtly allows users to connect to the fediverse. 

But if an app gets a reputation for being difficult, unwieldy, or too "techy" for the average person (like Mastodon), it could spell its doom. Or at least reserve it to being a niche community for a certain subset of people (which is totally fine, too...it's just not, you know, a "Twitter killer."). 

And then there's the question of the almighty dollar: how will Bluesky make money? The company raised about $15 million so far (a drop in the bucket when it comes to apps with the founding team's pedigree). It has a small full-time team (though that will surely be changing soon thanks to its seismic growth). But it will need to generate revenue at some point. 

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber has already ruled out the most traditional forms of social media advertising as a source of revenue. For one, she says, forcing ads into a user's feed wouldn't work — because they can simply create their own feed without them. 

But Graber hasn't ruled out advertising entirely. She says things like sponsored search results could be in play. One thing Bluesky definitely won't do? AI licensing deals. The platform pledges not to allow companies to train their AI chatbots on user posts (though, in true Internet fashion, there will always be ways around this). 

There are more questions than answers when it comes to Bluesky's longterm viability. But the surge in users, overwhelmingly positive feedback of the platform, and relatively low levels of investor bloat mean the social media app has a shot at truly claiming the mantle of "Twitter killer." Well, after Elon Musk, that is.