The core infrastructure of Bluesky Social is now available, and the platform, backed by Jack Dorsey and a growing community of decentralization proponents, presents a compelling open source vision at a time of growing dissatisfaction with predominantly centralized social applications.
Bluesky Social is an open source decentralized alternative platform to X (formerly Twitter). It has officially ended its closed beta period and is open to the public for registration. The platform already has more than 3 million users in its private beta phase, and there is likely to be an influx of new users.
The public launch is an important milestone for the platform, which began as an experimental project within Twitter under the direction of Jack Dorsey. Since becoming an independent company, Bluesky has been focused on creating an alternative social network that gives users more control through decentralization and transparency.
At first glance, Bluesky's app looks very similar to X, with chronological posts that early users nicknamed "skeets." Under the surface, however, Bluesky is built on the AT protocol, an open source standard that will soon allow independent developers and groups to create their own instances of the Internet platform.
CEO Jay Graber describes their vision as an "open, decentralized protocol" similar to email, allowing users of different services like Gmail and Outlook to communicate freely between different providers. This approach stands in stark contrast to closed, centralized social networks like Facebook and Twitter, which exert control over every aspect of their platforms.
While Bluesky is still much smaller than its mainstream rivals, it has carved out a niche among users eager to return to the quirky culture of early Twitter. Although it's missing some features, like direct messaging, its growth has not been hindered so far. In contrast, Meta's Threads also lack direct messaging capabilities.
Bluesky's public debut coincides with the changing landscape of X alternatives. Threads, which has more than 130 million active users according to Meta, has expanded into the wider Mastodon ecosystem by publishing some posts on the Mastodon platform, with the aim of eventually integrating into the fediverse.
In addition to eliminating the waitlist, Bluesky also unveiled plans to invite outside developers to host experimental servers interconnected with its main network - a key step toward its broader vision of a user-controlled federated network. The company also intends to empower users and organizations to create moderation tools and filters that individuals can choose to use on their own feeds.