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Bluesky

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"Bsky" redirects here. For the broadcasting company, see BSkyB.
For other uses, see Bluesky (disambiguation).

Bluesky
A simplified silhouette of a butterfly, with two symmetric pairs of wings, colored with a sky-blue gradient
Current logo used in Bluesky's interface branding, introduced December 2023
Web interface showing a user account on Bluesky. To the left, a list of different modes. In the center, a header and profile description above a feed with posts, threading, and embedded content. To the right, a list of user-selected custom feeds.
Screenshot of the Bluesky desktop interface, featuring the official company account, October 2024
Type of site
Social networking service
Available in19 languages[1]
FoundedOctober 4, 2021; 3 years ago (2021-10-04) in Wilmington, Delaware[2]
Area servedWorldwide
CEOJay Graber[3]
Key people
ParentBluesky Social, PBC[2]
URL
RegistrationPublicly available since February 6, 2024. Previously invitation-only.[5]
Users
  • Increase 14.1 million total registered users (as of November 9, 2024)[6][7]
  • Decrease 6.4 million MAU (as of November 8, 2024)[8]
Current statusActive

Bluesky (commonly abbreviated as Bsky) is a decentralized[9] microblogging social platform. The platform was created by Bluesky Social, a public benefit corporation based in the United States, as a proof of concept for the AT Protocol, a communication protocol for decentralized social networks.[10][11] Jay Graber is the company's CEO, with XMPP creator Jeremie Miller and Techdirt founder Mike Masnick serving on its board of directors.[3][4] In addition to its website, the service is also accessible via apps for iOS and Android. The service is focused on microblogging, and has been called "Twitter-like".[12]

A core feature of the service is its usage of domain names as handles. Users are assigned a generic subdomain handle after signing up (such as @example.bsky.social). Handles with the default *.bsky.social suffix redirect to the relevant user's page when visited in a web browser. They can choose to verify a domain or subdomain after signing up.[13] According to the company's website, the system is designed to be a method of verifying a user's legitimacy and identity, akin to how it is common to check a page URL for a potential phishing or typosquatting attack.[14]

Service history

[edit]
Graph showing an increase in the amount of registered users on Bluesky.
The total number of users on Bluesky increased from approximately 200,000 in July 2023 to over 5.9 million by July 2024, with a marked increase in early 2024.

Bluesky was described in 2021 as an initiative to develop what is now the AT Protocol, a decentralized social network protocol in which multiple social networks, each with its own systems of curation and moderation, interact with other social networks through an open standard. Each social network using the protocol would be called an "application".[9] As of 2024, Bluesky Social operates its own official network within the AT Protocol, Bluesky, a centralized service running on open-source software for its servers and client apps, with the initial protocol implementation released under the MIT license.[15] Neither the protocol nor service uses blockchain technology.[16][17] Frequent users have called posts on the platform "skeets",[18][19] which is a portmanteau of "sky" and "tweets",[20] but also a slang word for ejaculation,[21][22][23] despite CEO Jay Graber pleading with users not to call them that.[24]

The Authenticated Data Experiment (ADX), in mid-2022, was Bluesky Social's first early protocol release. It used personal data repositories, intended to be controlled by individual users, that social networks would optionally support. The stated purpose was to let users post messages without necessarily affecting their visibility to other users, as primary storage of the data would remain in the personal data repository while networks would handle the distribution to other users.[25] The ATP FAQ[26] later described this distinction as a division between "speech" and "reach" layers.[27] Bluesky Social released a simplified version as the "AT Protocol" in October 2022, alongside technical documentation.[28]

Bluesky Social started a waitlist in October 2022 for a service that would use the protocol.[16] At the time of release, Bluesky Social only addressed interoperability and had not explained how it would address platform moderation and monetization.[28] In February 2023, the Bluesky app was released for iOS as an invitation-only beta, and the service was available only to users who had received an invitation code, either from the company or from an existing user. Reviewing the app, TechCrunch called it "a functional, if still rather bare-bones, Twitter-like experience."[12]

In April 2023, it was released for Android.[29][30] After the launch of the Android app, the social network reached about 50,000 users in April 2023.[31] The launch surfaced technical issues, including a bug that created incorrect notifications.[31] Bluesky Social was made open source under the MIT license in May 2023.[32] On May 26,[33] 2023, Bluesky launched a feature it called "Custom Feeds", with the goal of promoting algorithmic choice. Bluesky developer Paul Frazee stated that "In future updates [Bluesky] will make it easy for users to create custom feeds in-app."[34] Third-party tools to publish Custom Feeds on Bluesky have been created by independent developers, including a popular client named Skyfeed.[35]

In September 2023, Bluesky reached 1 million registered users,[36] and in November, it surpassed 2 million users.[37] In December 2023, Bluesky Social announced a new platform and company logo, which was also used as the icon for the official app and website. This icon was a blue butterfly, inspired by existing users' usage of the butterfly emoji to indicate their handles on the service. The launch of this new icon corresponded with the release of a public view for posts on the network, allowing those without accounts on the service to view its posts.[38]

Opening to general public

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The platform became open to all public registrations on 6 February 2024, when the previous invitation-only format was dropped.[39] It saw an influx of registrations by Japanese-speaking users, partly due to notable Japanese social media personalities such as artist Ui Shigure registering accounts there. The platform for a while had over six times more Japanese-language posts than English-language ones.[40]

On August 30, 2024, Brazilian Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered the shutdown of Twitter within the country after the company missed his deadline to appoint a legal representative for Brazil's investigation into Elon Musk.[41] As a result of the deadline and subsequent shutdown, Bluesky saw a large increase in signups, gaining over 4 million users in under two weeks and becoming the most popular app in the Brazilian App Store and Play Store.[42][43] As a result, on September 16, Bluesky announced it had crossed the mark of 10 million users.[44] On September 11, 2024, Bluesky began gradually rolling out video functionality to users after teasing the feature for months. Uploaded videos have a time limit of 60 seconds, and users can upload a maximum of 10GB or 25 videos a day to the platform.[45]

Following a decision made by Twitter on October 16, 2024 to change how the block feature works, where blocked accounts can still see posts by users who blocked them if their profile is public, and a decision to update their Terms of Service so the company can use any user's post data to train AI, Bluesky announced that over 1.2 million users had joined within 2 days.[46][47][48]

Company history

[edit]
Jay Graber stands behind a lectern holding a microphone in a lecture hall, listening for audience questions after giving a talk at a developer conference.
Jay Graber, who would become the CEO of Bluesky in August 2021, gives a speech at an MIT event in Cambridge, Massachusetts during March 2018.

Twitter's then-CEO Jack Dorsey first announced the Bluesky initiative in 2019 on Twitter.[49] The company's Chief Technology Officer (and later CEO) Parag Agrawal was its manager,[16] inviting initial working group members in early 2020. The group expanded with representatives from existing decentralized networks Mastodon and ActivityPub. The group coordinated through a chat hosted over the Matrix protocol. Twitter commissioned Jay Graber of the Happening decentralized social network to compose a technical review of the decentralized social network landscape.[9] She was hired to lead Bluesky in August 2021.[50][51] Bluesky Social formally incorporated in late 2021 as a public benefit LLC[16] separate from Twitter.[52]

Twitter executives approved of the initiative's scope and goals, which include what the protocol itself should encompass and what should be left to applications (the social networks built atop the standard). Some of these goals include letting applications customize their system of moderation, making applications responsible for compliance and takedown requests, and preventing virality algorithms from reinforcing controversy and moral outrage. The working group did not have a consensus toward these goals, so Twitter decided to field individual proposals, which ranged from reinforcing existing standards to endorsing standard interoperability, letting usage data decide where to invest. In early 2021, Bluesky was in a research phase, with 40–50 people from the decentralized technology community active in assessing options and assembling proposals for the protocol.[9] Bluesky Social's first three employees were hired in March 2022.[53] Around the same time, Dorsey acknowledged Bluesky's slow progress.[54]

Twitter's blockchain division, newly announced in November 2021, planned to work with the Bluesky initiative.[55] The division head resigned after Elon Musk bought Twitter in late 2022. Staff departures made the team's future remit unclear.[56] Musk's takeover did not immediately affect Bluesky Social's operations, as a separate entity, but does affect its long-term funding.[54] Bluesky Social had received $13 million from Twitter via Musk's initial offer in April 2022. Adi Robertson for The Verge wrote that even with Bluesky Social's independence, Musk's ownership of Twitter would make Bluesky Social easy to defund, with its main executive proponents having left Twitter.[16]

On July 5, 2023, Bluesky Social announced it had raised $8 million in a seed funding round.[57] The seed round was led by Neo, a firm with partners like Code.org co-founder Ali Partovi and former Twitter PM Suzanne Xie, and included other investors such as Joe Beda (co-creator of Kubernetes), Bob Young of Red Hat, Amjad Masad of Replit, Amir Shevat, Heather Meeker, Jeromy Johnson, and Automattic.[57] Bluesky Social plans to use the funds to grow its team, manage operations, pay for infrastructure costs, and build out the AT Protocol technology that it runs on.[57]

Prior to the seed round, Bluesky Social's website described the company as a Public Benefit LLC owned by Graber and other Bluesky Social employees.[58] Post-seed round, the company describes itself as a public-benefit C Corp.[57] The company has not publicly disclosed its charter.[58] On May 4, 2024, Jack Dorsey, Bluesky Social funder and initiator, announced on X that he was no longer on Bluesky Social's board, and Bluesky Social confirmed his departure.[59]

AT Protocol

[edit]
Main article: AT Protocol

Bluesky unveiled open source code in May 2022 for an early version of its distributed social network protocol, Authenticated Data Experiment (ADX),[25] since renamed the Authenticated Transfer (AT) Protocol.[16] The team opened its early code and placed it under an MIT License so that the development process would be seen in public.[25]

The AT Protocol's initial federation architecture centers around three main services: a Personal Data Server (PDS), Relay (previously referred to as a Big Graph Service, or BGS), and an AppView.[60] A PDS is a server which hosts user data[60] in "Data Repositories", which utilize a Merkle tree.[61] The PDS also handles user authentication and manages the signing keys for its hosted repositories. A Relay is described as analogous to an indexer on the web, ingesting repositories from a variety of different PDS hosts and serving them in a single unified stream for other services to ingest. AppViews, meanwhile, are services which consume data from a Relay and hydrate that data to provide behavior for specific clients, e.g. the microblogging feature set for the Bluesky app.[60]

See also

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References

[edit]
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Further reading

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Media related to Bluesky Social at Wikimedia Commons

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