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While still small compared to established online spaces like X, it has emerged as an alternative for those looking for a different kind of social space.
Championed by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Bluesky was an invitation-only space until it opened to the public in February.
That invitation-only period gave the site time to build out moderation tools and other features.
The platform resembles Musk’s X, with a “discovery” feed and a chronological feed for the accounts users follow.
Users can send direct messages and pin posts, as well as find “starter packs” that provide a curated list of people and custom feeds to follow.
Bluesky said in mid-November that its total number of users had grown to 15 million, up from about 13 million in late October, as some X users look for an alternative platform to post their thoughts and chat with others online.
The post-election surge in users isn’t the first time Bluesky has benefited from people leaving X.
About 500,000 new users signed up in a single day in October, when X signaled that blocked accounts would be able to see users’ public posts.
Some said it reminded them of the early days of Twitter more than a decade ago.
Despite Bluesky’s growth, X announced after the election that it had “dominated the global conversation about the US election” and set new records.
Bluesky, however, has bigger ambitions than replacing the X.
Beyond the platform itself, it’s building a technical foundation — what it calls a “public conversation protocol” — that could allow social networks to work across platforms — also known as interoperability — like email, blogs or phone numbers.
Currently, you cannot switch from one social platform to another to leave a comment on someone’s account.
Twitter users must remain on Twitter and TikTok users must remain on TikTok to interact with accounts on those services.
Big tech companies have largely built moats around their online properties, which helps serve their advertising-centric business models.
Bluesky claims to be trying to reimagine all of this and is working on interoperability.
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