Recently, the term 'BlueSky' is being seen quite a lot in various social media platforms and newspapers. So many people are interested in this. BlueSky is essentially a new social media platform, which has emerged as an alternative to Elon Musk's 'X' (formerly Twitter). It is gaining more popularity especially after this year's US election.
As of yesterday, the number of users of this platform was around 1 crore 67 lakh. But day by day this number is increasing. About 1 million new users are signing up on this platform every day. Its colors and logo are similar to X. But it has added several new features.
But why so many people are interested in using BlueSky?
What is Bluesky?
BlueSky is a microblogging platform. It describes itself as 'social media as it should be'. Although its design looks similar to many other platforms. A bar on the left side of its home page shows options like search, notification, homepage etc. Platform users can post, comment, re-post and like their favorite content.
Simply put, it looks just like the old Twitter. But the main difference is that BlueSky is 'decentralised' or 'decentralised'. It's a tricky word. Which means – users can host their data on their own servers instead of company owned servers.
This means that BlueSky will not be restricted to a specific account. Users can (if they wish) use an account that they own. But most people don't and new users usually end their username with '. bsky uses 'social'.
Who owns BlueSky?
BlueSky was founded by Jack Dorsey, the former head of Twitter. He once said he wanted to create a 'decentralized' version of BlueSky, with no single person or organization owning it. But Jack Dorsey is no longer a part of BlueSky's team. He resigned from the board in May 2024 and also deleted his account in September.
BlueSky is currently managed and principally owned by CEO Jay Graber. It operates as a United States public benefit corporation.
The reason for Bluesky's rapid popularity
BlueSky started its journey in 2019. But till February this year it was restricted to being a 'specific invitation based' platform. That is, only those who were invited by others through the link could sign in. So the developers had plenty of time to make the platform more stable and address its bugs before releasing it on a large scale.
This plan has been somewhat successful. However, the number of new users has increased so much this month that the platform still doesn't work at times.
This is no coincidence. Because the number of new users of Platformpot increased rapidly after the victory of Donald Trump in the US election in November. Elon Musk, the owner of X, was a big supporter of Trump's election campaign. Musk is expected to be deeply involved with the new administration. This created a political divide on social media, leading many to leave X and join BlueSky. Especially US citizens.
On the other hand, the British newspaper The Guardian boycotted X as 'a toxic media platform'. Meanwhile, the BlueSky app is gaining significant downloads across the globe. Listed as the 'Most Downloaded Free App' in the UK Apple App Store last Thursday.
Celebrities such as pop singer Lizzo, Taskmaster's Greg Davis, Ben Stiller, Jamie Dee Curtis and Patton Oswalt, among others, have announced they will join BlueSky and limit their appearances on X. Some celebrities have even given up X altogether.
While BlueSky's growth has been significant, it can only compete with microblogging platforms like X if it can sustain this momentum over a long period of time.
X does not share its total number of users. But X is estimated to have billions of daily users. Elon Musk once said that X has 250 million daily active users.
How BlueSky Earns
BlueSky started with funding from investors and venture capital firms. In this way, Blue Sky raised several million dollars. But now that the number of new users is increasing rapidly, BlueSky needs to find an efficient way to cover the running costs.
When Twitter was in good shape, it made most of its revenue from advertising. But BlueSky wants to avoid this approach. They said they will further experiment with 'paid services'. For example, if users want to use a custom domain in their 'username', they have to pay for it. This could be a new form of 'verification'. Because the organization that will manage the website, they have to get permission to use the username.
If BlueSky owners want to stay away from ads, they may need to look into 'subscription' or other paid features.
However, this is not very unusual for new tech startups, as they may not earn much initially.
Not sure how BlueSky will generate revenue at the moment. But if the platform continues to grow like this, anything is possible.
Source: BBC
