When it launched last year, BlueSky was invite-only. Starting this Tuesday, it will be open to anyone who wants an account. Its appearance and functionality are modeled after those of X, formerly Twitter, with one caveat: it is open source. After the opening, BlueSky was out of service for a few hours: “We are seeing a lot of new registrations and some servers have reached their capacity limits,” the platform said.
The network was born from an idea by Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and then CEO of Twitter, in 2019. The goal was to create a decentralized social network. The initiative began within Twitter but became independent in 2021 with Jay Gruber as executive president. This move saved the network from possible closure following Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter.
According to Bluesky's own information, it now has 3.6 million accounts, not all of which are active. A page that updates Bluesky's daily data shows the jump on February 6th. The number is a far cry from the 130 million threads, the alternative to X created by Meta. X said late last year that it had 500 million users, although it is unclear whether different networks use the same metrics to define what a user is.
The big difference with Bluesky is that it works with an open and decentralized protocol. This system allows its users to create or adopt their own versions of the network using the customized algorithm. In one of his latest posts, he publicly thanks various developers for some new features on the platform. The idea is similar to that already used by another X competitor, Mastodon.
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