Bluesky is having a moment, and it’s been going on for almost three months now.
After X (formerly Twitter) was temporarily banned in Brazil over the summer, a lot of new people signed up for the social media app. Bluesky’s growth seems to have sped up a lot in the US, where people are unhappy with changes at X and with owner Elon Musk’s close ties to President-Elect Donald Trump.
SimilarWeb says that the day after the election was the busiest day for both X’s traffic and account deletions. Bluesky, on the other hand, says it’s been adding a million new users every day. On Saturday, the company said it now has 18 million users, making it the most popular free app in the Apple App Store.
What a surprise! This has led to some issues, including slowdowns or outages and difficulties in keeping material safe and appropriate. Jay Graber, CEO, told The New York Times that there are “always some growing pains.” However, she said that her 20-person full-time team is “proud of our ability to scale quickly.”
Longtime users are also having trouble with technical issues. They are also trying to figure out what this fast growth means for the Bluesky group. There have been posts about how great the App Store is and the newest celebrities who have signed up, but there have also been posts that make fun of the requirements for being a “Bluesky elder,” whining when the wrong kinds of users show up, and pleading or scolding reminders to “don’t engage, just block” when dealing with trolls.
Even my strange connection with Bluesky is changing, I can tell. In the past year, I’ve spent more time on that social media app than any other. However, my friend count stopped at around 200, which made me feel free, but not free enough to post more than once a month. The numbers started to go up again this week. They’re still pretty low, but I swear I used to be popular on other social networks. Right away, I started to worry that someone might actually notice if I said something stupid.
Even though my Bluesky influence is pretty small, I feel protective of it. Maybe you’ve heard this story before: early fans always complain when cool new things are found by most people. And no, I’m not going to start writing things like “Keep Bluesky weird!” or “Bluesky is over!” But I worry that the things that have made the Bluesky group fun, strange, and even energizing might go away as more people join.
To put it another way, Bluesky has always seemed like the small, left-leaning option to X. What makes Bluesky Bluesky now that it’s not the “short king” of social media? Seeing so many names I knew from Old Twitter made me wonder if we were just going to make Twitter look like it did in 2014. That wouldn’t be the worst thing, but surely we can do better in 2024?
Bluesky’s leaders have at least made it clear that they want to change things. Regular users might not notice some of the differences, like the focus on decentralization, but many of their goals seem to be built into the product and the business. There are strong blocking tools, a reverse chronological (not algorithmic) feed, a promise not to teach AI from user posts, and a future business plan based on paid subscriptions instead of ads.
Graber is aware of a possible clash of cultures. He calls it a “eternal September” problem, where old-timers get upset when waves of newcomers come in and change things. She said that Bluesky plans to fix this by making its automatic content moderation tools better and adding more features that let users make their experience their own.
Also Read: Bluesky Says That in the Last 24 Hours, 1 Million People Signed Up for the App
The next few months and years may show that these choices and features can really help keep online groups safe and healthy. We may have all learned something from seeing how other social networks die because they are poisonous or unproductive. I hope so. What if not? I learned from Twitter that you should always be ready to switch apps.
What do you say about this story? Visit Parhlo World For more.
