Bluesky Says It Doesn't Want To Compete With Mastodon And Isn't Worried About Elon Musk And Twitter

One of the many potential social media companies that could rival Twitter as the latter sees a handful of changes under its new CEO is Bluesky. 

What Happened: Decentralized social media company Bluesky counts Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey as an investor and could be a competitor to Twitter and other platforms.

Decentralized platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky could increase in popularity as some users are upset with changes made to Twitter since Elon Musk acquired the latter platform for $44 billion in 2022.

In a recent interview with The Verge, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber shared what sets the company apart from its social media rivals and what it has in store.

Bluesky, which was released on the Apple iOS App Store earlier in February and the Google Play Store in April, is currently available to users by invitation only. The platform has so far seen its waitlist jump to over 1.2 million and has accepted 20,000 people, Graber told The Verge. 

“We’ve designed a protocol that has three big things we think are missing from the Mastodon ecosystem: account portability, global discoverability, (and) composable, customizable curation and moderation,” Graber said.

Graber added that she doesn’t see Bluesky in competition with Mastodon, a rival decentralized social media platform.

“(We) are simply taking a different opinionated approach. Our focus right now is on building out our approach and proving it works at scale,” she said. 

The CEO also told The Verge that Jack Dorsey is still on Bluesky's board of directors. 

“He’s still on our board. He also welcomes multiple approaches to achieving a decentralized social ecosystem, and I believe he ultimately just wants this paradigm of protocols instead of platforms to succeed,” she said of the Twitter co-founder. 

Unlike Twitter, Bluesky offers account portability, allowing social media users to move their accounts from one platform to another without having to rebuild their profiles — or following — from scratch. 

“That’s the benefit of account portability between services that we’ve designed around. Users can still opt in to the convenience of an easy-to-use service, but the user’s ability to leave when they want constrains the service’s ability to abuse their power,” Graber explained. 

Related Link: Is Cesspit Of Hate Driving The Exodus From Twitter? Here's How Many People Are On Twitter Alternative Mastodon 

What’s Next: As Bluesky's waitlist expands, there is no definite timeline on how quickly the platform will accept users. 

“I hesitate to give timelines because we’re a small team and are working hard right now to keep up with demand and build out the moderation tooling that we think is essential to broader adoption,” Graber told The Verge. 

As Bluesky grows and sees users shift from centralized social media, it could also be a prime target for Elon Musk and Twitter. Rival platforms like Mastodon have already seen their links banned from the latter platform, which has sought to protect itself against the competition. 

“As the owner of a centralized site, he is free to [ban Bluesky's links from Twitter] if he wants. But this is exactly why what we’re building — the AT Protocol gives users freedom and developers locked-open APIs,” Graber said of Musk.

Bluesky was originally incubated within Twitter in 2019 before being spun off. It received $13 million in funding following its split. Amid public conversation surrounding Twitter's future in April 2022, the company shared details of its relationship with Twitter, claiming that both Twitter and Bluesky realized that the latter's "independence is important to the success of the project."

“Twitter’s funding of Bluesky is not subject to any conditions except one: that Bluesky is to research and develop technologies that enable open and decentralized public conversation,” Bluesky further tweeted.

Read Next: Elon Musk Hopes People Who Left Twitter For Other Platforms Stay There

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