Instead of Twitter, this time it’s really a show.
Written by: Moonshot, GeekPark
If you were asked to name the top two celebrity users of X right now, who would you think of? Trump and Musk might be the answer for many people.
X’s top followers rankings, Trump and Musk are the most active users in the top ten. Source: Wikipedia
Trump returned to the White House, and both X and his buddy Musk have made a lot of effort. Back then, because they couldn’t stand the “political correctness” of other social media, and couldn’t stand Trump being banned and silenced by Twitter, Musk acquired Twitter.
After a series of policy adjustments such as renaming, layoffs, subscription services, etc. by Musk, the valuation of X has fallen from $44 billion at the time of acquisition to about $9.4 billion, a decrease of nearly 80%. The company’s revenue has also dropped by 84%, and many major advertisers have stopped advertising on X.
The most frightening thing is:
Users are also running.
The global daily active users of X decreased by 15%, while the US users decreased by 18%. And after the US election, this user loss is still accelerating. On the day of the US election count, over 115,000 US users chose to deactivate their X account, setting the highest record since Musk took over.
Suspected of covering up the loss of users, Musk also announced last week that he would hide the data of “likes, comments, and retweets” on the X platform. In this regard, the reason given by Musk is that “the interface is much cleaner”.
Musk hides the likes and other project numbers on X | Image source: X
However, users will not disappear, only transfer, and one of the destinations of the X user flow is Bluesky.
On the same election vote-counting day, Bluesky attracted about 1.2 million visitors, higher than Threads’ 950,000 visitors. On November 14th, Bluesky announced that it had gained about 2.5 million new users in the past week, with a total user count exceeding 16 million and DAUs soaring to 3.5 million. On November 19th, Bluesky officially surpassed 20 million users, rising 300% since election day.
So what is Bluesky? Is it a ‘gentle replacement’ for X, or another fleeting social platform, or a successor to Twitter in the pre-Musk era?
01 The true successor of Twitter
When you open the Bluesky page, you might think you’ve clicked into a Twitter account page.
Because it is based on the former Twitter, and also originated from the Twitter company, even at the beginning of its establishment, it was intended to become an idealized Twitter.
This taste is too good. | Image source: Bluesky
Bluesky began in 2019, when Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey announced the Bluesky project on Twitter. They want to establish an open and decentralized social media platform standard, with safer user profiles and less content interference from Algorithm.
Jack Dorsey also revealed the plan in 2019 and expressed the hope that Twitter will eventually meet the standard of Decentralization.
In 2021, Bluesky separated from Twitter and established Bluesky Social Company. In 2022, after Musk took over Twitter, Bluesky cut off all legal and financial connections with Twitter and started accelerating application development.
The original intention of Bluesky is to create a technology standard for Decentralization social media, and after 2022, they want to become the Decentralization’s Twitter directly.
In February this year, Bluesky officially opened for registration. In the past ten months, it has accumulated 20 million users and is currently on the rise.
Bluesky and Twitter look almost the same on the page | Image Source: Bluesky
Bluesky is very similar to Twitter in form. With text, images, and videos within 300 characters per post, users can reply, repost, quote, and like. Although CEO Jay Graber strongly disagrees, Bluesky’s users call the platform’s posts “skeets” (Sky + Twitter).
What makes Bluesky popular is not only its similarity to Twitter in form, but also its opposite pattern from technology to content.
02 X opposed, we advocate
Bluesky’s core technology is the AT protocol, which allows different social media to communicate with each other. Users can follow and interact with each other on different platforms without relying on a single centralized platform.
Users can also choose the storage location of the data autonomously, which can be their own server or cloud storage. The AT protocol ensures that the user’s data will not be locked to a single platform. Even if the user does not want to use Bluesky anymore, they can easily take their content and data with them.
From the creation of the account, you can choose the server for storing content | Image source: Bluesky
In other words, users are spared the trouble of clicking on one app after another to brush the information flow, spared from worrying about data loss after being deleted, spared from considering migration costs, and even have to use a social platform they don’t like very much with a nose pinch.
Bluesky wants to give developers the freedom to build platforms and users the right to leave.
How did X do it? Recently, Musk hinted that X is actively limiting the visibility of posts containing external links. In October 2023, he also admitted, “Our Algorithm optimizes the time users spend on X, so external links will not receive much attention, because if people jump through links, they will spend less time on X.”
Question from renowned tech observer Paul Graham | Image source: X
In January last year, X officially disabled third-party clients, and many famous third-party applications in the Twitter era came to an end. In February, X cancelled the free API. On October 30th, X announced that the lowest-tier API package would rise from $100 to $200.
A series of blocking operations, stemming from Musk’s desire to keep users, data, and money all in X, the actual consequence is: all three are being lost.
The current X and Bluesky, inherited from Twitter, are like the incarnations of two platform icons. One is clear black and white, centered X, which meets the butterfly named Blue Sky evolved from the blue bird.
The platform has a completely different temperament | Image source: self-made by the author
On the content level, the inclination of Bluesky and X is even more apparent.
The control over external links and the indulgence of fake news have caused extreme dissatisfaction among traditional journalists and media. In early November, The Guardian announced that it would no longer post on X formally, calling it “a toxic media platform” and its owner (Musk) “using his influence to shape political discourse”.
Previously, foreign media reported that Musk adjusted the platform’s recommended Algorithm, increasing the visibility of right-leaning content on X; according to a 2024 study by the Pew Research Center, X is becoming increasingly popular among right-leaning users, and the spread and interaction of right-leaning content are also more frequent.
X Two major celebrity figures - Musk and Trump, have also publicly supported right-wing political figures and viewpoints several times in the past two years, even expressing support for the far-right political party ‘Alternative for Germany’ (AfD) in Germany.
As the election season approached this year, Musk spared no effort in supporting Trump. After the election, Deutsche Welle reported that ‘Musk not only disseminated false information himself, but also shared posts with false elements, misleading narratives, and conspiracy theories through retweets.’ According to the latest report from CCDH, from January to July 2024, Musk’s fake news on X accumulated a total of 1.2 billion views.
The first buddy comes to the platform | Image source: AP
X is no longer a neutral social platform, filled with fake news, conspiracy theories, harassment, gender opposition, online violence, and extreme right-wing leaning.
Bluesky is also difficult to call neutral. In February 2023, Bluesky started an invitation-only internal test, with a large number of ethnic minority communities and subcultures invited, including journalists, transgender individuals, Black artists, left-wing political activists…
Both ‘Vice’ and ‘The Atlantic’ have used ‘weird’ to describe Bluesky’s early users, which is both a compliment and a reflection of the diverse atmosphere of the Bluesky platform.
Media praises Bluesky for being able to maintain its ‘original intention of being a weirdo’ | Image Source: Vice
In a recent interview, Bluesky COO Rose Wang said that the early goal of the open test period is to “cultivate a group of users who can help promote the Bluesky concept, tell and strengthen community culture.” The service terms of Bluesky also state that “discriminatory behavior based on ‘race, gender, religion, ethnicity, nationality, disability, or sexual orientation, targeting individuals’ is prohibited.”
It is not difficult to see that Bluesky is also on the opposite side of X in terms of platform orientation, leaning to the left.
And unlike X’s echo chamber formed by algorithms such as ‘recommended follow’, Bluesky’s algorithm is also decentralized. Users can customize content recommendation algorithms based on their interests across different platforms, without relying on the algorithm rules of a specific platform. The official ‘custom summary’ feature also saves users from endless algorithmic waterfall.
Tips before entering Bluesky | Image source: Bluesky
Twitter was once a global square for breaking news and colliding ideas (the name Twitter itself comes from “chirping”), but over time and with changes in leadership, it has become X, also turning into an echo chamber and amplifier for a certain political ideology.
“I think the influx of new users to Bluesky is actually because people are too disgusted with X,” said Bluesky COO Rose Wang.
03 How to make money, a flash in the pan?
Bluesky is not the first social platform to try to challenge X. Previously reported ‘00s social platform noplace’ attempted to be a younger version of Twitter, but after a surge of popularity, it also disappeared without a trace.
Emerging social media platforms are constantly emerging, but the current situation is still dominated by the established giants Meta and X.
But Bluesky is different. It was born out of the orthodox Twitter team, inheriting Twitter’s content form and innovating in technical ways. They uphold the concept of Decentralization, diversity, freedom of speech, and freedom of data, trying to solve the accumulated dissatisfaction with social media over the years: closed, Algorithm, echo chamber, online violence…
In the current network environment, Bluesky appears so perfect and idealistic.
But the problem is, what sustains the ideal? How to ensure that Bluesky does not become the next Twitter that disappears after being acquired?
Perhaps as a lesson from the past, Bluesky made adjustments to its corporate structure that are different from other tech companies.
In 2019, Bluesky received $13 million in development funding from Twitter, and by 2022 it had become independent as Bluesky Social. After that, the nature of Bluesky Social changed to a “public welfare legal person”, which means it is allowed to use its profits for public interest without the obligation to pursue profit and maximize shareholder value.
According to official disclosure, as of the end of 2024, Bluesky’s operating funds mainly come from investors and venture capital companies. On October 24th, Bluesky announced that it had raised $15 million in Series A financing.
CEO Jay Graber also promised that Bluesky will be permanently free to use, and currently does not consider an advertising-based business model. They want to pursue values while achieving commercialization.
Bluesky CEO Jay Graber | Image source: Wired
The Bluesky team reflected on the problems encountered in the commercialization of Twitter: it was too focused on the platform and had to move from open to closed in order to sell the platform’s value. This tendency of Twitter has also been accelerated under Musk’s leadership at X.
The commercialization strategy of Bluesky is to adhere to the openness of the platform and return to their independently developed AT protocol. For example, they have been selling custom domain names to users, giving them the naming rights beyond just nicknames, and opening up the AT protocol to other applications to collect licensing fees, etc.
Meanwhile, Bluesky is also considering paid subscription services, where users can pay to unlock higher quality videos, more customizable profiles, etc. Bluesky also aims to establish a peer-to-peer payment service between users and creators in the creator community, for purchasing digital artworks, paid articles, code, and tipping.
However, at the moment when one user after another cancels X and registers Bluesky, the financial pressure faced by Bluesky is much lower than the server pressure.
“Opening Bluesky feels like logging into Twitter 10 years ago. It’s weird, but friendly. Every user is thirsty for knowledge.” Many new Bluesky users have expressed similar feelings.
Bluesky also posted on the official blog to celebrate the completion of Series A financing. The previous round of funding was heavily invested in developing anti-harassment and security tools. Currently, custom content summaries have been launched on the platform, Ozone, the review tool, has been Open Sourced, and custom domains have started to be sold…
It looks like the future of Bluesky is orderly and clear.
“Twitter refugees” flock to “new king” | Image source: Bluesky
In the end of the blog post, they wrote: ‘Traditional social media companies have closed off public data, closed off their APIs, cut off the livelihood of independent developers, and deployed black box algorithms that we can’t understand. The era of old social media has ended - at Bluesky, we will give you choice and power back.’
Bluesky adheres to the ancient Internet spirit, appearing at the present, an era of AI-empowered fake news, extreme and opposing positions. Regardless of how long they can maintain their original intentions, whether they can completely shake Meta and X, they have established a new set of rules, presenting the Internet and social media in the way they should be.
The world needs social media like this.
