Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you'll likely have heard a lot about Bluesky over the past couple of weeks. The social media platform has seen a surge in signups since the American election, with Elon Musk accused of turning X into a Republican marketing machine for Donald Trump. Major news organizations like The Guardian have already shuttered their X accounts, while celebrities ranging from Lizzo to Mark Hamill have waved goodbye to the wasteland that used to be Twitter while searching for 'bluer' pastures.
Bluesky has been happily going with the mantra of 'X's loss is our gain', with it crossing the milestone of one million new users in a single and the platform in general currently boasting over 21 million users.
Bluesky has seen a 500% surge since the 2024 American election, and while we've seen the likes of Threads and Mastodon try to rival X in the past but peter out after a while, X's critics think Bluesky could be the one to topple Musk.
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Despite questions about why Musk rebranded Twitter as X, his obsession can be traced back to when he founded X.com in 1999 - which later became PayPal. He's since launched SpaceX, named one of his Teslas a Model X, and even stuck the letter at the start of X Æ A-Xii's name.
If you're wondering what Bluesky means, CEO Jay Graber has explained it in a tell-all thread on the platform. Posting on Bluesky, Graber confirmed that the idea of it was born from a placeholder name for an 'open social protocol' that was built for Twitter.
Way back when (in 2019), former CEO Jack Dorsey led Twitter's research into what became the AT Protocol. Graber joined the Bluesky project in 2021, but when Musk acquired Twitter and severed all financial ties, development rapidly spun out into the completely separate Bluesky we see today.
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2. Here's an image from a presentation I gave to Twitter, representing the Twitter bird freed from a closed platform to fly in Bluesky's open ecosystem.
— Jay 🦋 (@jay.bsky.team) November 19, 2024 at 6:19 PM
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Later in the thread, Graber uses the analogy of the Twitter bird (we miss that little dude) freed from its cage and able to 'fly in Bluesky's open ecosystem.' Even if the Bluesky logo of a blue butterfly isn't as iconic as the Twitter bird right now, most agree it's softer than X's harsh lettering.
Many aren’t keen on Musk’s Twitter rebrand, especially with him slashing 78% off the platform's value since he bought it in October 2022.
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As Bluesky describes itself as a microblogging and social networking service that's inspired by Twitter, the old Twitter crowd will likely be happy that it lives on in some form.
Despite Bluesky's success, there are already warnings about a rise in fake accounts and cryptocurrency scams. Still, it seems that its moderation is being better received than on X, and after Elon Musk rolled back the block feature, Bluesky is slapping those who are trying to bring over X's growing toxicity with an immediate ban hammer.
Whether the Bluesky bubble will continue to grow or it's destined to burst, at least you now know what it means.