Celebs, Politicians Join Twitter Rival Bluesky: Here’s How You Can Too

The platform on Thursday said it had just experienced its biggest single-day jump in users yet.

With Twitter mired in confusion over check marks, subscriptions and an ever—increasing number of seemingly haphazard decisions by the platform’s owner Elon Musk, some users are searching for alternatives.

Many are looking no further than Bluesky, which has its own origins in Twitter and, to all intents and purposes, acts in a very similar fashion. Its latest devotees include US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, writer-comedian Dril and model Chrissy Teigen. But for now it’s invite only. The platform on Thursday said it had just experienced its biggest single-day jump in users yet.

Here’s everything you need to know about Bluesky — and how to get an all-important invite:

What is Bluesky?

On the outside, Bluesky is a platform with similar looks and features to Twitter — albeit simpler — allowing users to create a profile and post text and images. The real difference is under the hood. Instead of building a social platform like Twitter or Facebook, the Bluesky project is about creating the behind-the-scenes interface to allow any social platform to plug in — so users can keep their identity and connections across services.

The idea of a decentralized network is to make it possible for users to shop around for the platform with the best interface or the content moderation choices they prefer, reducing their reliance on any single service provider and giving them more control over how their data is used.

Who owns it?
The Bluesky project was kicked off by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in 2019, initially funded by the platform as a side-project to develop a decentralized social media standard. Dorsey said upon its launch that his goal was for Twitter to “ultimately be a client of this standard.” In 2022, under the leadership of Chief Executive Officer Jay Graber, Bluesky announced the launch of the Bluesky PBLLC as an independent organization.

Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard.