Bluesky is being touted as ‘Twitter before Elon Musk’. Can the good vibes last?

Bluesky is a social media app that looks and feels a lot like Twitter did in its halcyon early days, long before Elon “first buddy” Musk got his mitts on it.
It started out as a Twitter side project but became an independent rival to the renamed X, quietly picking up users every time Musk did something to make X worse.
An “X-odus” sparked by the re-election of Musk’s mate Donald Trump has now seen its traffic explode and its user base swell from 13 million in October to more than 21 million. Indeed, newbie users have surged so quickly that it can be tough to spot the arrival of actual real-life friends.
An accusation thrown at X users who defect to Bluesky is that they only want to hang out with like-minded souls who reinforce their existing world views. This misses the mark. Most migrants from X are simply trying to flee the nonsense-spewing and often abusive accounts – many of them bots – that were amplified by Musk’s algorithms.
In any case, for lots of users, social networks are just that: a place to be social.
[ Bluesky, the non-toxic alternative to X, has had a glow-up. But is the app here to stay?Opens in new window ]
Right now, the vibes are good on Bluesky. But the app is still a boutique one. So far, it’s doing a decent enough job resolving its technical growing pains. The longer-term question is how it makes money in future.
Bluesky – owned by chief executive Jay Graber and her small team – is a public benefit corporation with a mission to give users more control by being open and transparent about how it works.
It is a for-profit business, however. Graber says she won’t “enshittify” the app with advertising, and she has also made assuring statements on privacy, moderation and AI. Still, it wouldn’t be too surprising if some Bluesky features aren’t always free, or if its honeymoon period expires at some point.
Social media fatigue is real. On her podcast The Rest is Entertainment, the Guardian columnist Marina Hyde this week queried the logic of complaining about how terrible one app can be, then signing up to another one to “start the whole depressing journey all over again”.
But for many users, the labour involved in setting up somewhere new will be worth the pay-off. The trick is not to get too comfortable.
It is not compulsory to post every minute of every day on social media – or to be on any app at all. But there is one thing new Bluesky joiners must definitely do: follow @irishtimes.bsky.social.