Bluesky is most definitely alive and kicking

Last weekend, an ugly rumor of a tragic death spread began rocketing around Bluesky. What made it odd was the identity of the dearly departed: Bluesky itself.

It’s not entirely clear what prompted this discussion, which ultimately seemed to be dominated by Bluesky fans rejecting the possibility that the social network had died (or at least jumped the shark). According to one theory, a story by Semafor’s Max Tani ignited the debate by mentioning Democratic congressional staffers who’d given up on Bluesky “after their bosses kept getting yelled at by Democratic users angry at their impotence.” That doesn’t sound like evidence of death to me. Another contributing factor might have been slowing user growth after millions of disaffected Twitter users arrived en masse in the wake of the U.S. November presidential election results and Elon Musk’s Trump boosterism. The service grew from 11 million users to 25 million between late October and mid-December, but has added only about 10 million more since then. Again, not a sign of rigor mortis or even a dreaded vibe shift.

For a social network, being prematurely written off is a rite of passage. It’s even a compliment of sorts—a sign that people are paying attention and care. Way back in 2014, for instance, when Twitter was still ascendant, I wrote about the fact that cranky users had started predicting its demise less than a year after it launched in 2006. So when I chatted with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber this week, I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t seem fazed by the debate on her platform and saw the parallels with early-days Twitter.

“Reports of our death are greatly exaggerated,” she told me. “It’s a similar thing, because with social sites, it’s not straight up all the time. [Growth] comes in waves, and at each stage, there’s a new era of communities being established and formed. We’re still seeing a lot of community formation, and one of the most exciting things is how structurally different this is. It’s not just another social site that has to be a singular winner takes all in an ecosystem with existing incumbents.”

I spoke with Graber backstage at the Web Summit conference in Vancouver, shortly after she’d been &t=4286s">interviewed by Wired’s Katie Drummond during the event’s Tuesday night opening session. (I should note that she’s also appearing at a Fast Company event next week.) Her assertion that social networking’s days of corporatized centralization are over seems manifestly true to me, and it’s a phenomenon bigger than Bluesky itself.

In November, I stopped posting to Twitter and began using a wonderful multi-network app called OpenVibe to post to three alternatives. Bluesky is one of them. So is Mastodon, an even more grass-roots operation that makes Bluesky, with its 25 employees, look like a tech giant. And the third—Meta’s Threads—actually does hail from a tech giant.

I‘ve had rewarding experiences on all three, though Threads, which has around 10 times as many users as Bluesky, feels too much like a purposefully sterile planned community to me. I prefer havens for wandering conversations and playful weirdness, which Bluesky and Mastodon both provide at their best. All three show every sign of remaining relevant for the long haul, unlike some of the Twitter wannabes that didn’t make it (RIP, T2 and Post) or turned out not to matter all that much (hello, Substack Notes).

Like The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel, I’m surprised that so many reasonable people remain active on Twitter, which has come to resemble a dystopian carnival ride. (Exhibit A, for the moment: The bizarre recent incident in which Musk’s Grok bot wouldn’t shut up about supposed white genocide in South Africa.) But I wouldn’t argue that Twitter is dying—just that it’s a disfigured shell of its former self.

I don’t expect any social network to replace the Twitter of yore as the internet’s uncontested go-to destination for real-time chatter about current events and pop culture. Bluesky, however, is still making progress in its quest to fill the hole left by Musk’s dismantling act. A new Pew Research Center study confirms that the presidential election results led to a major influx of news influencers at Bluesky, though even more are still on Twitter. Moreover, Bluesky is beginning to build functionality to cultivate conversations around the day’s events.

Earlier this month, for example, the service began beta testing a feature that lets the NBA use its Bluesky profile picture as a portal that sends users to live content. The company says the WNBA account will also get the capability, which—if deployed more widely—would be pretty useful for anybody who offers live video, including individuals on YouTube and Twitch.

In a roundabout way, this new Live Now feature reminds me of Twitter’s pricey 2016 gambit to turn itself into a live-event platform by streaming NFL games. Except all Bluesky is doing is facilitating users leaving the service to consume video elsewhere, which is both infinitely cheaper than buying sporting rights and more in line with its philosophy of knocking down social media’s walled gardens. “We are a pass-through so that, as a content creator, you can get users onto your site more easily,” says Graber.

If Bluesky is still in the process of becoming as conducive to community as Twitter once was, it’s also avoided some of the problems that have long dogged the older service. The Pew study showed that its news-influencer presence skews to the left, a finding that won’t startle anyone who’s spent time there. Any broadening of its political spectrum could result in its tenor growing more fraught. Already, it can have a snappish quality, as reflected in the congressional drubbing reported by Semafor and software kingpin Adobe’s hostile reception after it began posting in April. (Overly brand safe Bluesky is not.)

What happens if Bluesky ever gets overrun with trolls, as Twitter was years before Musk took charge? I asked Graber about its approach to moderation, especially in a period when Meta seems quite proud of its Twitter-like decision to dramatically scale back attempts to keep the conversation on its platforms accurate and civil. “We’ve always stayed lean, but we’ve always had human moderators, and we think that humans always need to be in the loop,” she told me. “Because ultimately, you’re dealing with humans. On the other hand, there are automated systems that are constantly attacking social networks and you have to have automated systems to keep up with that. So we use a combination.” The company also leverages the work of third parties who use open-source moderation tools to block spammers, she says.

One other challenge that Bluesky has not yet fully confronted is monetizing itself. Onstage at Web Summit, Graber emphasized that it’s working on subscription services, a healthier revenue source than stuffing feeds with ads, though potentially a tougher one to scale up to sustainability. The company announced a $15 million Series A funding round last October.

Graber isn’t the type to declare her intention to crush the competition. In a previous conversation I had with her, she said nice things about Mastodon. Even her digs at Meta are a principled stance against social media being dominated by a few monolithic companies. But neither is she satisfied to operate a social network that may never grow to the size of a Twitter or Threads. In both her onstage interview and our subsequent chat, she was at her most passionate when discussing the company’s aspiration to decentralize social networking via its open AT Protocol. It powers Bluesky—and variants such as the Pinksky photo-sharing app, which she praised onstage—but could also provide the infrastructure for further-flung social experiences. Maybe even ones catering to folks who have zero interest in participating in the Bluesky community.

“The goal is to really get through that this is a choose your own adventure and Bluesky’s just the beginning,” she says. “The sky’s the limit.” Whether she’ll fulfill her grandest ambitions, I’m not sure. But I already like this era of social networking better than the one when a handful of winners really did take all.

You’ve been reading Plugged In, Fast Company’s weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you—or if you’re reading it on FastCompany.com—you can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard.

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