What Is Bluesky?

In the UK, we call it Bonfire Night. In the US, it was the 47th presidential election. And for millions of new Bluesky users across the world, 5 November 2024 was the beginning of the Xodus.

What Is Bluesky?

Bluesky (bsky.app) is a social media platform modelled on Twitter, meaning the interface is very similar, and the concept of ‘microblogging’ is central. Bluesky users share short messages, images and videos in posts colloquially known as ‘skeets’, and have control over their algorithm and what they see.

Dating back to 2019, Bluesky started life as a research project of Twitter, through which the then-CEO Jack Dorsey explored the possibility of decentralising Twitter. Decentralisation is the shift away from the traditional model in social media, where one company controls the platform and all of its data. Bluesky, in contrast, is built on distributed systems and relies on user-managed moderation as well as its own collaborative moderation tool, Ozone.

By October 2021, it was clear Bluesky should be a separate entity to Twitter – which would come in handy when Elon Musk would initiate an acquisition of Twitter in April 2022. At this point, Bluesky severed all ties with Twitter, legal and financial, though it wasn’t quite ready for use. By February 2023, a beta app was launched on an invite-only basis, and it quickly became associated with politically left-leaning users who fled the Twitter ship as soon as possible. Gathering 3 million users in a year-long invite-only beta era, Bluesky opened itself up to the public in February 2024, hitting 10 million users by September – 4 million of which came from Brazil after Twitter was blocked there.

Shortly after, however, Dorsey left Bluesky Social’s board, reporting the new app was ‘literally repeating all the mistakes Twitter made as a company’, specifically taking issue with the introduction of moderation tools to the platform. ‘What happened is, people started seeing Bluesky as something to run to, away from Twitter,’ Dorsey told Pirate Wires earlier this year. ‘It’s the thing that’s not Twitter, and therefore it’s great. And Bluesky saw this exodus of people from Twitter show up, and it was a very, very common crowd.

Bluesky ‘was designed to be controlled by the people,’ Dorsey adds. ‘I think the greatest idea – which we need – is an algorithm store, where you choose how you see all the conversations. But little by little, they [Bluesky’s users] started asking Jay [Graber, Bluesky’s CEO] and the team for moderation tools, and to kick people off. And unfortunately they followed through with it.

‘That was the second moment I thought, uh, nope,’ Dorsey says. ‘This is literally repeating all the mistakes we made as a company. This is not a protocol that’s truly decentralised. It’s another app. It’s another app that’s just kind of following in Twitter’s footsteps, but for a different part of the population.’

Why Is Everyone Signing Up?

The most recent influx of users to Bluesky is known as the ‘Xodus’: millions of Twitter users from the US, Canada and the UK left X and joined Bluesky following Donald Trump’s re-election in the 2024 United States presidential election on 5 November. By 19 November, Bluesky reported it had hit 20 million users. For comparison, however, X still has 300 million monthly active users, while Meta’s Threads boasts 250 million users.

While the re-election of Trump has been an impetus for many to leave X (which is spearheaded by Trump’s close pal, Musk), many also criticise the older platform’s descent into a mess of bots, scams, misinformation, pornography and advertisements as well as rampant racism, homophobia, transphobia and extreme content.

Who Has Made The Move From Twitter To Bluesky?

Many famous faces have boycotted X and moved to Bluesky, including:

• Ben Stiller
• Barbra Streisand
• Jamie Lee Curtis
• Bette Midler
• Dionne Warwick
• Mark Hamill
• Gabrielle Union
• Lizzo
• Stephen King
• Stephen Bush
• Al Yankovic

Meanwhile, many publications have also made the move to Bluesky, including:

• The Guardian
• The Times
• The Economist
• The Atlantic
• The New York Times
• Bloomberg
• Financial Times
• Bellingcat
• Huff Post
• Hong Kong Free Press
• Newsweek
• Vanity Fair
• The Wall Street Journal

What Is A Bluesky Starter Pack?

To help new users find people to follow, Bluesky has curated ‘starter packs’ encapsulating verified accounts in different industries and covering different interests, from football to startups.