Microblogging social platform Bluesky has dropped its invite-only system, meaning anyone can now sign up.
The X/Twitter-like network, which has been championed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in the past, is “building an open foundation for the social internet’ to help provide a more self-moderated and focused social experience.
It has also shared its interoperable plans which allows users move their friends, followers, and other data between competing social networks.
What Is Bluesky?
Bluesky is perhaps the closest thing to Twitter you can get. And not X/Twitter, we mean Twitter of old.
As well as a very familiar interface, you’ll find all the features you’d expect from a platform like this, such as posts, feeds and a mute button. The linear timelines can also be moderated using lists and content filters seemingly giving users more control and customization over what ends up in their feed. Direct messaging isn’t yet available but according to the platform, it’s on the way.
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Set up as a public benefit operation, Bluesky has just under 40 full-time employees, half of which work on moderation and user support. According to CEO Jay Graber, the app has 1.6 million monthly users and 25,000 customer feeds.
How Do I Sign Up for Bluesky?
Until Tuesday, those who wanted to join Bluesky needed an invitation from existing members. This was an intentional period of exclusivity, designed to give the platform more time to build out features and moderation tools. Now it’s in a more-ready state, membership is open to all.
The app has had over 3 million sign-ups since its launch last year, with even more downloads to its name. The hope is that because would-be users now don’t need an invite to join, those downloads will convert into active users and Bluesky can become a conversation platform for a more general audience.
Signing up is now as simple as going to https://bsky.social, tapping the ‘sign up’ button, and creating an account.
Interoperable Plans Ahead
According to the company, it is the “last social account you’ll ever need to create”. This is because it has plans for an interoperable system called ‘federation’, meaning it will allow and facilitate users moving their friend groups, followers, and any other handy data to competing social networks.
Meta’s Threads is already experimenting with this by allowing users to share posts to Mastodon using a decentralized protocol called ActivityPub. On this, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated last December: “Making Threads interoperable will give people more choice over how they interact and it will help content reach more people. I’m pretty optimistic about this.”
In contrast, Bluesky has gone with a federation algorithm called the Authenticated Transfer Protocol and seems to be the only social networking service to use it.
Bluesky is available for all on desktop, as well as the App Store and Google Play store.
