The Sky is always Bluer
Over the past week, millions of new users, including some of Twitter's most prolific producers, have moved operations to Bluesky. If you've heard about Bluesky, if you haven't heard about Bluesky, if you are someone who was the 72,868th user on Bluesky (me) today's Warp will be a breakdown of the upstart social media app and the innovative philosophy it is bringing to the microblogging space. I'll just say it up front: if you are a Twitter user, the switching cost is dropping lower and lower. Come on in, the sky is always bluer over here.
What the hell is Bluesky and how is it different?
Bluesky is basically Twitter. It has essentially all of the same functions of Twitter. You can post, follow, create lists, post videos, reply, quote tweet. But there are a few key differences between the two apps, companies, and general vibes.
Bluesky is much, much smaller than Twitter
Recent data estimates that Twitter has a daily active user base of around 245 million people. Yesterday Bluesky passed 19 million total users. That's less than 8%. But! In August of this year, Bluesky had less than 6 million. Hell, last week it only had 15 million. So the hockey stick growth is beginning.
But traditional social media sites have a supply and demand problem. I've seen different estimates for this, but on all sites - not just Twitter - somewhere between 5-10% of the user base generates between 80-90% of the content with which people engage. From comic accounts to sports media accounts, only a small fraction of the site's users actually make any of the stuff worth sticking around for. When those people leave, their audiences come too.
In the last week, dozens of big name Twitter users have moved over to Bluesky, most notably in the sports media space. Mark Cuban is on Bluesky now (building his audience for a presidential run? I'm speculating!). Mina Kimes is on Bluesky. Beat reporters and national ESPN personalities, they are all moving from Twitter to Bluesky. Sunday was the first big NFL day for Bluesky, and I have literally never seen as much activity on the app in the year and a half I have been on it.
Bluesky is a decentralized social media platform
Twitter (and the other main social media platforms) is a centralized network. The posts you make there, the people you follow, the people that follow you, they are all exclusive to Twitter. All of the data comes back to one centralized entity: Twitter itself. If you want to bring you audience over to YouTube or TikTok, you just have to hope that those people also have accounts on those other platforms and that they will find you.
On Bluesky, you can choose the server that houses your account, making it portable and interoperable with other services. If another app crops up that can utilize Bluesky's decentralized protocol it should be incredibly easy to communicate with your audience across the platforms.
Think of it this way. There are many, many clients for email, and you have an option for which one you want to use. You still get the same emails, but you get more choice in how you interact with them. This is the same idea but for social media.
Bluesky is not owned by Elon Musk
Anecdotally, the biggest reason I have observed that people are moving over to Bluesky is the feeling that Twitter has become overrun by right wing freaks. There's a sense that Elon is putting his thumb on the scale to privilege insane reactionary bullshit, anti-LGBTQ ideas, and democracy undermining disinformation. Turns out plenty of people don't really want that. Turns out plenty of people who have relied upon Twitter for their work as journalists don't want their words used to train AI, don't want their NFL takes coming up next to Nazi stuff, and don't want their data used by America's newest political idiot.
One of Bluesky's most refreshing features is that you can pick and choose the algorithmic feeds you want. You want a feed that focuses on Bluesky's Black users? They've got it. How about one that shows you pictures of cats all day? Yep. Want just tech news updates? It can do that. But you can also very easily do "reverse-chron" which is just a reverse chronological feed of all the posts the people you follow make. If you don't want to be railroaded with tweets explaining how trans people are doing blood libel, you don't have to!
Why now and what now
There is one glaringly obvious reason why Bluesky is Having A Moment right now, and that's the election. Many left leaning users of Twitter have been turned off by its owner's actions and are recoiling from the crushing defeat the election brought. Denizens of the internet are showing a desire for a friendlier, more personal internet and they are finding it on Bluesky.
The general vibe of the site has been actively anti-Twitter. Developers and product managers on the Bluesky team are openly welcoming these new users. Bluesky has a pretty unforgiving "block culture," in which people pretty freely block users that suck for any reason, primarily if they are right wing losers attempting to build engagement on the new platform.
Bluesky's anti-Twitter approach has stoked plenty of criticism, with allegedly smart people claiming that it is an "echo chamber" where soft hearted libs don't have to contend with "challenging" ideas. "I went to Bluesky and everyone blocked me" seems to be a self fulfilling refrain from the Twitter class of right wing engagement baiters. Frankly, I don't give a single shit. People can do whatever they want. And if Twitter is where you go to "contend with challenging ideas" then you are not a serious person.
Unserious people thrive on Twitter because of its incentive model. Making posts that bait users to engage with them is the powerhouse mitochondria of the cancerous Twitter cell. It is Elon's whole bag, and it is the only way to draw advertisers and sell subscriptions.
Bluesky's incentive model doesn't look very much like Twitter's. As of right now it is not selling user data, it does not feature advertisements, it does not have a paid subscriber tier.
Here is a blog post from last year detailing an aspect of their business model. They want to do nerd stuff like sell domains.
Now, we should certainly not blindly accept what a company says when they are in the middle of their biggest user growth. Bluesky does not want to say anything right now that might turn users away, or suggest even for a moment that this place will be just like Twitter in the end. But there are signals that Bluesky is sincere (for now!) that it is better.
For one, Bluesky is a Public Benefit Corporation, meaning that while it is a for-profit company it seeks to serve the public good. Some other benefit corps you may have heard of: Patagonia, Ben and Jerry's, Kickstarter.
Additionally, Bluesky appears to be somewhat cooperatively owned. According to its website, Bluesky is owned by "Jay Graber and the Bluesky team." Who is Jay Graber? She is the CEO of Bluesky and is in her early thirties. She has one total post on Bluesky from six months ago. So far, it seems like she does not seem particularly interested in being a Muskian arbiter of what goes on on the platform. Her full name is Lantian "Jay" Graber. Lantian, or 蓝天, in Mandarin? It means "blue sky."
Come on in, the sky is fine
I take a somewhat silly amount of pride in having been one of the first 75k users on this site. But, honestly, I have been espousing the virtues of a smaller internet for a while. An internet built for humans, not advertisers and bots. An internet that actually feels fun to engage with! What a concept! If you are someone who likes the Twitter model, there is space for you on Bluesky.
Here are some pieces of writing about this recent surge in Bluesky users:
