Ever since Elon Musk downsized Twitter, moved the service behind a paywall, and renamed it X, many users have been looking for an alternative social media platform.
So far, neither has emerged as a clear winner, but EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, alarmed by misinformation about X, has just publicly opted for Bluesky, one of X’s lesser-known competitors.
What is Bluesky?.
The platform was created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey as a side project in 2019.
Dorsey sidelined five engineers to create a decentralized alternative to Twitter.
At the time, he said centralized efforts to curb abuse and misinformation on a platform like Twitter were unlikely to work, and wanted to give users more control over personal data and content moderation.
But Bluesky was released only at the beginning of this year.
The current version looks and feels incredibly similar to Musk’s site.
But the platform retains its exclusivity: you need an invitation from another user or you have to sign up for a “waiting list”, and it can take several weeks to get an account.
Who uses it?.
The more Musk sought to turn X into a realm of paywalls and petty claims, the more popular the alternatives became.
Bluesky is still in the experimental stage, but last month said it had already passed the one million user mark.
According to the company, registrations spiked every time Musk made controversial changes to his platform.
Among his first followers are American politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and fashion model Chrissy Teigen.
And journalists and media outlets, frequent targets of Musk’s ire at X, are moving in droves.
American publications such as the Washington Post and the New York Times already publish their articles on Bluesky.
However, the platform has not yet achieved a huge network effect, and discussion of current events is limited.
Its “What’s New” feature provides users with a list of the top topics at any given time, which on Wednesday included a lot of cat photos and very little discussion of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Can he compete with X?.
The field is becoming crowded, with small operators battling giants like Meta, which launched its Threads service in July.
The numbers don’t look good for the upstarts.
Within days of its launch, Threads had more than 100 million people sign up, and Musk claims X has 550 million users, although his numbers are disputed.
But Bluesky is promoting a completely different model.
He wants users and developers to be able to freely interact with the platform, including through third-party applications.
The company also insists it will not rely on advertising or monetization of user data, rolling out a paid service for those who want their names attached to a domain name.
Early reviews of the platform were generally positive, with Silicon Valley tech commentator Casey Newton praising its focus on decentralization, writing on his Platformer site that it was “almost a carbon copy of Twitter in its early days.”
An editorial on technology news site The Verge in May was equally positive.
“Bluesky has a long way to go to completely replace Twitter, but right now I think it’s actually possible,” it said.