It's unusual for a new social media service to gain a foothold in a market like X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and TikTok, which dominate people's phones. But blue skyThe nearly 2-year-old app has been gaining attention recently amid a surge in the number of new users, which the company says is likely due to growing frustration with X.
While the platform has grown since opening as an invite-only service in February 2023, it has seen a huge increase in membership following the November 5 presidential election. Bluesky currently has more than 22 million users, according to company data, up from about 12 million in mid-October.
Bluesky believes its recent growth is partly due to the changes at X under billionaire owner Elon Musk, according to Rose Wang, Bluesky's chief operating officer, who recently spoke to CBS MoneyWatch.
musk, who bought twitter $44 billion in 2022, has overhauled the service, It has been renamed to And priority to Accounts of people who pay for the blue checkmark – although accounts with more than 2,500 “verified customer followers” get access to premium features Free,
advertising sales approx softened immediately After Musk took over the platform, companies including Apple, Coca-Cola and Disney removed paid ads from X last yearRecently, The Guardian said that it would will no longer be posted Its content is under its official account on X. In its announcement, the British newspaper described X as “toxic”, and said the platform has been used by Musk to shape political discourse.
According to a CBS News investigation, Musk became one of the most viral voices in the polls during the 2024 campaign, frequently sharing conspiratorial stories while promoting President-elect Donald Trump. found.
When Twitter became
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
What is the difference between X and Bluesky?
Bluesky resembles the “old Twitter” in terms of layout and content, wrote PCWorld tech writer Dave Parrack in a recent column. He added, “Bluesky feels like a safe haven. There is.” very little trollingAnd when that happens, people don't get upset.”
BlueSky users can find people to follow through so-called “starter Pack,” or curated lists of people to follow based on interests or fields, such as this Garden Writers GroupThe company says this enables users to create a feed of posts from people they choose, rather than being fed content by corporate algorithms.
Because people can customize their interests and connect with other like-minded users, there are more interactions on the service than on X, according to Wang.
Some companies are reporting higher engagement with their posts on the Bluesky app compared to rival platforms. For example, an executive for The Boston Globe noted Newspaper posts on Bluesky get three times more traffic than meta threads.
“Thirty percent of Bluesky's users are posters, compared to only 1% of users on Twitter,” Wang said.
Still, it's questionable whether Bluesky's increase in new users is making much of a dent in X's user base.
The presidential election led to an increase in traffic to Musk's social media services, According Tracking service for SimilarWeb. It found that more than 46 million US users visited X on November 6, the day after President-elect Donald Trump's victory – more than any day last year. Its data shows that about 115,000 people in the US deactivated their accounts on X on the same day.
how does bluesky make money
While Bluesky's user base is growing rapidly, the company remains small in terms of its funding and staff, which Wang describes as “a small team of 20” employees, including himself and CEO Jay Graber. . The service was created by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, although the business has been independent as of 2021.
In October, the company raised 15 million dollars in venture funding, followed by an $8 million seed round in 2023. Wang said Bluesky is focused on figuring out how to sustain its business, which will soon include new revenue streams from subscriptions and financial transactions.
“We're launching subscriptions later this year,” Wang said. “It'll be custom aesthetics, custom avatar frames, maybe more video uploads.”
The company also plans to enable financial transactions between users, such as if a game designer wants to sell their products to BlueSky users. Wang said the service would take a portion of the payments.
BlueSky does not accept advertising, he said, nor has it marketed itself since Musk took over Twitter.
To be sure, Bluesky may never achieve the size of the larger social media networks that advertisers use to reach large groups of users. For example, Facebook and Instagram owner Meta had more than 3 billion daily users on its apps in the most recent quarter, and to book Revenue during that period was approximately $40 billion.
How do you sign up for BlueSky?
Bluesky opened as an invite-only platform in February 2023, but anyone can now sign up for the service.
User handles on the service are slightly different from X or other social media networks because they end with the site's domain, .bsky.social. Posts are limited to 300 characters, 20 more than X. Photos and videos can also be uploaded, although videos cannot be longer than 60 seconds. GIF and emoji are also available.
Like other platforms, you can tag people on BlueSky by typing “@” before their username, you can like posts by tapping the heart icon, and use hashtags to highlight a theme. Can do. bluesky has added a menu For hashtags, so that when users click on one they will get different options to view or mute posts on a particular topic.
“It's more of a community space — it's more of the Reddit model, where you get into those cozy corners,” Wang said. “At the end of the day it's all about the people, and I encourage people to come to BlueSky, give it a try and see for themselves what the experience is like.”