Is the grass greener on the other side? We’re not sure, but the sky is most certainly bluer. It’s been two years since Elon Musk purchased Twitter, now X, leading people to set up shop on alternative platforms. Mastodon, Post, Pebble (two of which have already shuttered operations) and Spill have been presented as potential replacements, but few aside from Meta’s Threads have achieved the speed of growth Bluesky has reached.
As of December 2024, Bluesky has surpassed 24 million users. Its growth stems from several policy changes at X, including a heavily criticized change to the block feature and allowing third party companies to train their AI on users’ posts, which helped the app soar to the top of the U.S. App Store. Bluesky also saw a big boost following the results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election (which also contributed to an X exodus by Taylor Swift fans). But while the number is promising, the network has a lot of catching up to do to compete with Threads’ 275 million monthly active users.
Below, we’ve compiled the answers to some of the most common questions users have about Bluesky. And if you’ve made the switch, you can follow TechCrunch here as well as our team with our Starter Pack.
Bluesky is a decentralized social app conceptualized by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and developed in parallel with Twitter. The social network has a Twitter-like user interface with algorithmic choice, a federated design and community-specific moderation.
Bluesky is using an open source framework built in-house, the AT Protocol, meaning people outside of the company have transparency into how it is built and what is being developed.
Dorsey introduced the Bluesky project back in 2019 while he was still Twitter CEO. At the time, he said Twitter would be funding a “small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers,” charged with building a decentralized standard for social media, with the original goal that Twitter would adopt this standard itself. But that was before Elon Musk bought the platform, so Bluesky is completely divorced from X.
As of May 2024, Dorsey is no longer on Bluesky’s board. Bluesky is now an independent public benefit corporation led by CEO Jay Graber.
Upon signing up, users can create a handle which is then represented as @username.bsky.social as well as a display name that appears more prominent in bold text. If you’re so inclined, you can turn a domain name that you own into your username — so, for example, I’m known on Bluesky as @amanda.omg.lol.
The app itself functions much like a bare-bones X, where you can click a plus button to create a post of 256 characters, which can also include photos. Posts themselves can be replied to, retweeted, liked and, from a three-dot menu, reported, shared via the iOS Share Sheet to other apps, or copied as text.
You can search for and follow other individuals, then view their updates in your “Home” timeline. Previously, the Bluesky app would feature popular posts in a “What’s Hot” feed. That feed has since been replaced with an algorithmic and personalized “Discover” feed featuring more than just trending content.
For new users, Bluesky introduced a “Starter Pack” feature, which creates a curated list of people and custom feeds to follow in order to find interesting content right out of the gate. You can find TechCrunch’s Starter Pack right here.
User profiles contain the same sort of features you’d expect: a profile pic, background, bio, metrics and how many people they’re following. Profile feeds are divided into two sections, like X: posts and posts & replies.
There is also a “Discover” tab in the bottom center of the app’s navigation, which offers more “who to follow” suggestions and a running feed of recently posted Bluesky updates.
We’ve also put together a helpful guide on how to use Bluesky here.
By the beginning of July 2023, when Instagram’s Threads launched, Bluesky topped a million downloads across iOS and Android. Notable figures like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mark Cuban, Quinta Brunson, Dril, Weird Al Yankovic, Guillermo del Toro, Barbra Streisand, and even Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva have migrated to Bluesky.
Bluesky is also home to news organizations like Bloomberg, The Washington Post, and of course, TechCrunch! Since August 2024, Bluesky is also now allowing heads of state to sign up and join the platform for the first time.
In many ways, yes. Up until recently, Bluesky did not have DMs like X, but that has since been implemented. However, DMs on Bluesky are currently limited to one-to-one messages, not group messages. Bluesky has also said it is interested in implementing something similar to X’s Community Notes feature. Additionally, X does not use a decentralized protocol like ActivityPub or AT.
In October 2024, Elon Musk announced that X’s block feature would work differently than it has in the past. The new block functionality allows users you have blocked to view your posts and your profile, but not the ability to interact with your posts. Some users believe this update to be a safety concern, leading to an influx in Bluesky sign-ups as its block feature is more traditional.
In another move that separates Bluesky from X, the social network said it has “no intention” of using user content to train generative AI tools as X implemented a new terms of service that allows the platform to train AI models on public posts. But that doesn’t stop third parties from doing so.
While Bluesky was initially kicked off as a project convened by Jack Dorsey in 2019 when he was CEO of Twitter, the social app has been an independent company since its inception in 2021.
Yes, and it is now open to the public.
Bluesky’s goal is to find another means to sustain its network outside of advertising with paid services, so it can remain free to end users. On July 5, 2023, Bluesky announced additional seed round funding and a paid service that provides custom domains for end users who want to have a unique domain as their handle on the service. Bluesky has also emphasized that it does not want to “require selling user data for ads” in order to monetize its platform.
In November 2024, Bluesky announced it raised a $15 million Series A round and is developing a subscription service for premium features like “higher quality video uploads or profile customizations.” Bluesky, however, noted its subscription model will not follow in the footsteps of X’s “pay to win” premium offerings.
Yes. Bluesky’s team is developing the decentralized AT Protocol, which Bluesky was built atop. In its beta phase, users can only join the bsky.social network, but Bluesky plans to be federated, meaning that endless individually operated communities can exist within the open source network. So, if a developer outside of Bluesky built their own new social app using the AT Protocol, Bluesky users could jump over to the new app and port over their existing followers, handle and data.
“You’ll always have the freedom to choose (and to exit) instead of being held to the whims of private companies or black box algorithms. And wherever you go, your friends and relationships will be there too,” a Bluesky blog post explained.
In October 2023, Bluesky added email verification as part of a larger effort to improve account security and authentication on the network. The addition is an important step forward in terms of making Bluesky more competitive with larger networks like X, which have more robust security controls. In December 2023, Bluesky allowed users to opt out of a change that would expose their posts to the public web following backlash from users.
Yes. In May 2023, Bluesky released custom algorithms, which it calls “custom feeds.” Custom feeds allow users to subscribe to multiple different algorithms that showcase different kinds of posts a user may want to see. You can pin custom feeds that will show up at the top of your timeline as different tabs to pick from. The feeds you pin, or save, are located under the “My Feeds” menu in the app’s sidebar.
In March 2024, the company announced “AT Protocol Grants,” a new program that will dole out small grants to developers in order to foster growth and customization. One of the recipients, SkyFeed, is a custom tool that lets anyone build their own feeds using a graphical user interface.
Yes. Bluesky rolled out to Android users on April 20 and was initially launched to iOS users in late February. Users can access Bluesky on the web here.
After an October 2023 update, the app will now warn users of misleading links by flagging them. If links shared in users’ posts don’t match their text, the app will offer a “possibly misleading” warning to the user to alert them that the link may be directing them somewhere they don’t want to go.
In December 2024, the Bluesky Safety team posted that the company updated its impersonation policy to be “more aggressive,” adding that “impersonation and handle-squatting accounts will be removed.” The company said it is also exploring alternatives to its current domain handle verification process.
Bluesky has been embattled with moderation issues since its first launch. The app has been accused of failing to protect its marginalized users and failing to moderate racist content. Following a controversy about the app allowing racial slurs in account handles, frustrated users initiated a “posting strike,” where they refused to engage with the platform until it established guardrails to flag slurs and other offensive terms in usernames.
A December 2023 post from the Bluesky Safety account announced a large batch of moderation updates.
Bluesky is rolling out “more advanced automated tooling” designed to flag content that violates its Community Guidelines that will then be reviewed by the app’s moderation team.
Bluesky launched moderation features similar to ones on X, including user lists and moderation lists, the latter of which can be used to mute or block many users at once. The app is also developing a feature that lets users limit who can reply to posts.
Some Bluesky users are still advocating for the ability to set their accounts to private — a feature they have an increased need for after Bluesky announced it would launch a public web interface.
In March 2024, the company launched Ozone, a tool that lets users create and run their own independent moderation services that will give users “unprecedented control” over their social media experience.
Though Bluesky’s architecture is similar to Mastodon’s, many users have found Bluesky to be more intuitive, while Mastodon can come off as inaccessible: Choosing which instance to join feels like an impossible task on Mastodon, and longtime users are very defensive about their established posting norms, which can make joining the conversation intimidating. To remain competitive, Mastodon recently simplified its sign-up flow, making mastodon.social the default server for new users.
However, the launch of federation will make it work more similarly to Mastodon in that users can pick and choose which servers to join and move their accounts around at will.
Though Jack Dorsey funded Bluesky, he is not involved in day-to-day development and no longer sits on the company’s board. The CEO of Bluesky is Jay Graber, who previously worked as a software engineer for the cryptocurrency Zcash, then founded an event-planning site called Happening.
If you have more FAQs about Bluesky not covered here, leave us a comment below.
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At the start of the year, there were widespread concerns about how generative AI could be used to interfere in global elections to spread propaganda and disinformation. Fast forward to the end of the year, Meta claims those fears did not play out, at least on its platforms, as it shared that the technology had limited impact across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
The company says its findings are based on content around major elections in the U.S., Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, the EU Parliament, France, the U.K., South Africa, Mexico, and Brazil.
“While there were instances of confirmed or suspected use of AI in this way, the volumes remained low and our existing policies and processes proved sufficient to reduce the risk around generative AI content,” the company wrote in a blog post. “During the election period in the major elections listed above, ratings on AI content related to elections, politics, and social topics represented less than 1% of all fact-checked misinformation.”
Meta notes that its Imagine AI image generator rejected 590,000 requests to create images of President-elect Trump, Vice President-elect Vance, Vice President Harris, Governor Walz, and President Biden in the month leading up to election day in order to prevent people from creating election-related deepfakes.
The company also found that coordinated networks of accounts that were looking to spread propaganda or disinformation “made only incremental productivity and content-generation gains using generative AI.”
Meta says the use of AI didn’t impede its ability to take down these covert influence campaigns because it focuses these accounts’ behaviors, not on the content they post, regardless of whether or not they were created with AI.
The tech giant also revealed that it took down around 20 new covert influence operations around the world to prevent foreign interference. Meta says the majority of the networks it disrupted didn’t have authentic audiences and that some of them used fake likes and followers to appear more popular than they actually were.
Meta went on to point the finger at other platforms, noting that false videos about the U.S. election linked to Russian-based influence operations were often posted on X and Telegram.
“As we take stock of what we’ve learned during this remarkable year, we will keep our policies under review and announce any changes in the months ahead,” Meta wrote.
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Meta’s X competitor Instagram Threads is gaining an improved search interface, the company announced on Monday. The app, which offers a Meta-run alternative to Elon Musk’s X, but built on top of Instagram’s social graph, is rolling out a new way to search for specific posts, allowing users to filter searches by user profiles and date ranges.
This is not as comprehensive as X’s advanced search, which today lets users narrow queries by language, keywords, exact phrases, excluded words, hashtags, and more. But it does make it easier for Threads users to locate specific posts. It will also bring Threads search more on par with Bluesky’s search, which also allows users to filter searches by user profiles, date ranges, and more, using advanced queries. However, the Bluesky app itself doesn’t surface all the filtering options in its user interface as of yet.
Before this latest update, Threads search has been fairly basic. You could search by a keyword or keywords but only filter those results by two options — either “Top” for the posts with the most engagement, or “Recent” for the latest posts.
The new search functionality will be available to global users in the weeks ahead, noted the Threads account in a new post.
In recent days, Meta has been quickly releasing new features to combat the threat from social networking startup Bluesky, which has rapidly gained adoption as another X alternative. In September, Bluesky had north of 9 million users, but that number has soared in the weeks following the U.S. elections, as users left X over the political leanings of owner Elon Musk and various policy changes, such as plans to change how blocks work and to allow AI companies to train on X user data. Today, Bluesky claims nearly 24 million users.
To counter Bluesky’s potential, Meta’s Threads released new features including the ability for users to choose their own default feed, a design change that makes it easier to move between feeds, and an updated algorithm. It was also spotted developing its own take on Bluesky’s user-curated recommendation lists, called Starter Packs.
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A new app called GoBlue has launched to help those looking to track their following on Bluesky, the Twitter-like social network that’s rapidly grown in recent weeks to reach nearly 24 million users. Filling in a gap in the Bluesky ecosystem of third-party apps and utilities, GoBlue offers a simple interface for tracking your own Bluesky analytics in an iOS dashboard.
GoBlue’s developer Sven van der Zee noted the need for an analytics-tracking app amid Bluesky’s rise, as the social network becomes a more viable competitor to Elon Musk’s X.
“I was an avid Twitter user in the past [and] have been a daily Bluesky user since this month,” he tells TechCrunch. “Since switching over to Bluesky, I noticed that you could not see the stats in the app, so I decided to build an app myself.”
At launch, GoBlue offers just a few tools, including those to track metrics like new followers, comments, likes, and reposts.
Your Bluesky metrics are displayed as bar charts on the app’s home screen, where you can view your stats either by the day, week, month, or year. For those looking to actively grow their Bluesky following, the ability to see which posts are resonating with followers throughout the day could be the most useful aspect of the new app at present, as it lets you see what time of day you added new followers or saw increased engagement with your posts.
To use the app, sign in with your Bluesky handle and an app password. (App passwords can be created from Bluesky’s Settings, allowing you to log into third-party applications without sharing your main Bluesky password with those developers.)
For full access to your stats, you’ll need to choose how you’d like to pay: either the one-time $19.99 fee or a monthly or annual subscription at $3.99 per month or $14.99 per year, respectively.
For those tasked with managing social media accounts, GoBlue offers insights into basic growth and engagement metrics that aren’t yet available in the Bluesky app itself. Plus, users can monitor multiple Bluesky accounts from GoBlue.
The app is ad-free and has no daily limits on usage.
The developer says GoBlue is not yet finished; he’s working now to introduce iOS Home Screen widgets and post-specific analytics, which would offer even more insight into what sort of content works to attract attention on Bluesky.
Interest in Bluesky has soared following the U.S. elections, as Musk leveraged X to campaign for Trump. Other X users are also exploring alternatives after Musk changed how the blocking function on X works and updated X’s privacy policy to allow AI models to train on X user data. The growth is spurring the development of more third-party apps for Bluesky’s platform, where they’re joining other popular tools like deck.blue, which offers a TweetDeck-like (column-based) layout for Bluesky, those that aid in building custom feeds, third-party apps like Tokimeki and Skeets, and more.
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