Bluesky’s Big Growth and the Promise to Avoid “Enshittification”
A huge Increase in users was seen in Bluesky, a social media platform which is alternative to Twitter. As Jay Graber, CEO of this platform said, Bluesky now boasts 24 million users. The biggest jump in users was right after the US election. The problem is how to save this status and keep growing without falling into the same traps as other platforms when they try to squeeze more revenue out of users. Many popular social networks start as user-friendly, but as time goes on, they load their content with ads or push paid features too hard, making the user experience less enjoyable. Graber would like to avoid that scenario for Bluesky. He said that Bluesky does not plan to rely on ads to make money. Instead, he would use the strategy of subscriptions as a way of profit.
With subscriptions, users would pay a small amount of money to get access to extra features. For example the ability to upload higher-quality videos or customize feeds more deeply. Bluesky’s roots trace back to Twitter. At first, it started as an experimental project before going fully independent. After Elon Musk purchased Twitter (now rebranded as X) users began looking for alternatives. Many turned to Bluesky, causing its user numbers to grow. This growth did cause some technical problems, as site crashing a few times due to the sudden increase in traffic.
One of the positive sides of Bluesky is its focus on giving users more control. People can easily adjust what they see through user lists, starter packs, and muted words. Still, Bluesky faces tough competition. Meta’s Threads, another new social platform, has also been growing quickly. Threads recently added more customization options in response to user requests. Although Bluesky has a huge growth ight now, the competition to build a user-friendly, ad-free social network is far from over.