Bluesky Climbs to 24 Million Users, and Luke Skywalker Is One: Should You Join?

Social network Bluesky has been growing rapidly since the U.S. presidential election. The site has been adding more than 1 million new users per day over the past few days, a company representative said in a recent email. The site’s user base has grown by more than 10 million since the Nov. 5 election, reaching more than 25 million users on Dec. 3.

Bluesky users have created at least two changing counters to track the number of sites. 1 counter Theo Sanderson, Professor from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; another counter It was created by a user known simply as Natalie on the site.

Read more: What is the Bluesky Starter Pack? How to find and create them

The site is adding 1 million users every day, which equates to about 12 new users every second. The number of users in September was 9 million, compared with 24 million.

Celebrities also make Bluesky’s presence known. star wars star Mark Hamill recently joined the sitedeclared himself a “Twitter quitter.”

Bluesky may be thriving, but the site still has a long way to go before it can catch up to the competition. Forbes reports As of September, X had 588 million global users, down from 611 million in April. Threads, Meta’s X competitorwith more than 275 million daily active users.

X factor

While it’s impossible to determine how many new users left because of X owner Musk’s public support of President-elect Donald Trump, many Bluesky users mentioned the election in their first posts. Cable reports Many Taylor Swift fans (a group that once had a large presence on X) are turning to Bluesky.

Bluesky is a social media platform that has many similarities with X (formerly known as Twitter). After billionaire Musk, X goes through some changes purchased the site and retirement estate Show blue check mark for verified accounts, Recover a previously banned account and started New subscription plan.

October 16, X announced It is changing its blocking feature to allow people to prevent others from seeing their messages on the site. If posts are set to public, blocked accounts can now see that person’s posts on X, but they won’t be able to reply to, like, or retweet them. “This is not a blockage,” An X user replied. “This is support tracking.”

The next day, October 17, Lantian shared a post It was announced that 500,000 people visited in one day alone. “First day here” A blue sky user wrote in response to the company’s post about its growth. “I just came across it. I was a long-time Twitter user, but now it’s a shell of myself.”

X has also updated its terms of service so that any lawsuits brought by users against the service must be handled by a federal court in North Texas, “where judges often deliver victories for conservative litigants in political cases.” . “Globe and Mail” report.

These latest changes may have sparked an uptick in interest in Bluesky, which the company is seeing User account surge Earlier this year, X was blocked by a Brazilian court (the block was later X Can be released after paying the fine). according to new york timesusers say Bluesky is the app that comes closest to imitating X.

Read more: Bluesky was the little comfort I was looking for. hope it lasts

Here’s what you need to know about Bluesky.

How do I register?

To join, just go to the homepage Create an account. You can download the Bluesky app iOS system or Androidor use Bluesky on your desktop.

It will ask for your email address and phone number (to send a verification code), and tell you to choose a username and password. Then you come in.

How is Bluesky similar to X and Threads?

If you’re used to X, then Bluesky’s design and purpose should make sense to you.

The site uses vertically scrolling messages that feature small circular photo avatars of the user, with icons under the message showing how many comments, likes and retweets they have received. It looks very similar to the format of X meta themewhich is currently the second-ranked free app on the App Store, second only to Bluesky.

Read more: Is it time to cut off your X (Twitter)? The method is as follows

Who is behind it?

Here’s another Twitter/X connection: Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was a board member, Bluesky project Starting in 2019 When he was CEO of Twitter. Jay Graeber He is the CEO of Blue Sky.

Even Bluesky’s name is related to X’s previous name. Dorsey confirmed speculation from Bluesky users that the name has something to do with Twitter’s bird mascot, the idea being that the bird can fly more freely in the open blue sky. Dorsey left the board in Mayapparently because the service added auditing tools.

Although the “S” in “sky” in the site’s name is not capitalized, it is pronounced “blue sky.” Don’t rhyme with “brewski.”

The application is built on what is called Authentication Transfer Protocolor AT, a social media framework created by the company that consists of a network of many different sites.

How is Bluesky different?

domain as handle

For one thing, you can set your domain as your handle if you want. This could help with verification, which became a hot issue on Twitter once Musk started removing blue checkmarks from verified accounts that refused to pay the monthly fee.

“For example, a newsroom like NPR could set its handle to @npr.org,” Bluesky Social company blog notes. “Any reporter NPR wants to verify can then set their handle to @name.npr.org using the subdomain. Brand accounts can also have their handle set to their domain.”

Moderate

Moderation is also different. Another blog post It said Bluesky is already using automated moderation and is developing a community tagging system, which it describes as “something similar to a shared mute/block list.”

Users of many social media platforms will see posts in feeds selected for them by algorithms, although you can influence this by following or blocking certain accounts. But Bluesky wants to give you a chance to choose various algorithms to determine what you are seeing.

You can mute an account, which prevents you from seeing any notifications or top-level posts from them, or you can block an account, which goes a step further and means that neither you nor the other account can see or interact with each other’s posts . You can also report abusive posts or accounts. The blocking options may be of particular interest to users who are dissatisfied with X’s recent changes to blocking behavior.

There are several features – the ability to hide responses to your posts and separate your posts from those of other users who reference your posts – Designed to stop buildup and other toxic materials Behavior.

keep in touch

Creators who gain a following on Bluesky may one day be able to keep in touch with those who care about them, even as the service itself changes.

If you want to follow someone you follow on X, a third party sky follower bridge is a free tool that scans your follower list and tracks accounts with the same name on Bluesky. You’ll get some false positives and a lot of dormant Bluesky accounts, but overall we found it works well.

Custom feed

Algorithms are rules that determine how to filter content and recommend it to users. Bluesky has something called a custom feed, which allows you to choose the algorithm that determines what you see.

“Imagine you want your timeline to contain only posts from each other, or only posts with cat photos, or only posts related to sports – you can simply select the feed of your choice from the open marketplace,” Blog posts on the website explain. A longer article details Custom feed and algorithm selection. Click the hashtag icon at the bottom of the app to add and discover new feeds.

Developers can use the website’s Feed Generator Starter Kit Build custom feeds, the site promises Eventually, the tools will be so simple that the rest of us can build custom feeds.

starter pack

Want to access Bluesky directly by following a curated list of people? You can focus on starter packs, which are user-created and often themed listings. CNET has one Long explanation herebut in short, they are similar to X so-called lists, and are a great way to get a solid feed that suits your interests.

Read more: Easily find your favorite X (Twitter) content on Bluesky. The following is the specific operation method

Comment

Onion CEO Ben Collins tweets In April 2023, when he was a technology reporter for NBC, Bluesky “worked, looked and felt like (Twitter)” and praised the site’s “moderation, desktop experience and reliability.”

As of November 19, the site had a rating of 4.2 stars out of 5 on the Apple App Store. “Feels like the early days of Twitter, but more organic,” one commenter wrote.

Who is using it?

Here’s a short list of some of the people and groups you’ll see on Bluesky.