Discover the buzz around Bluesky, the rising star of social media! We're diving into the key features, rapid growth, and unique aspects of this decentralized platform. From its Twitter roots to its innovative approach, learn why Bluesky is attracting users and making waves in the digital landscape.
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00:00I think social media should be basically common infrastructure that society gets to use and evolve it as society evolves.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the biggest facts, information, and news about Blue Sky.
00:12We'll explore what you need to know about one of the fastest-rising social media sites around.
00:17On Blue Sky, there are about 50,000 different feeds that have been created by other users.
00:23Number 10. Influx of users.
00:25In November 2024, in the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election, interest in Blue Sky massively grew.
00:31The rise in popularity of the social network called Blue Sky enjoined huge growth in the aftermath of the presidential election.
00:38Less than two weeks after the election, the platform added a further 1 million accounts,
00:43taking the overall figure to around 15 million, significantly up from the 13 million in October.
00:47As the user numbers rose, the Blue Sky team had to rush to acquire more servers to keep up with the demand.
00:53By November 20th, the number of accounts increased further to 20 million.
00:56Blue Sky surpassing 20 million users with a flood of new people, including celebrities like Lizzo, Gabrielle Union, and Ben Stiller.
01:05Five days later, it had reached 22 million, seeing a 300% increase in users compared to before the election.
01:11One of the main reasons for the mass increase is Elon Musk's control of X, which many feel has led to an expansion in misinformation.
01:17Some users say they're drawn to an alternative to X.
01:21I think Elon Musk's association with our newly elected president was kind of the straw that sort of broke a lot of people's backs.
01:30Number nine, Toxic X.
01:32Since Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and turned it into X, many users have been discouraged by its change.
01:37Elon Musk has put his thumb on the scale of curating what we're all seeing.
01:43Gone is the iconic blue bird and instead replaced by bot accounts and an increase of hate.
01:47As such, several companies have decided to leave the platform.
01:50Following NPR in 2023, the UK news company The Guardian was one of the biggest to leave X in 2024.
01:56It's also the fact that Elon did something crucial.
01:59He installed the ability to monetize individual tweets based on engagement.
02:05And so what this was was a siren, a lamp for every scammer moth to come into Twitter.
02:12Other groups that have followed suit include German football clubs FC St.
02:16Pauli and Werder Bremen and even the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, England.
02:20Several celebrities have also exited X in favor of Blue Sky.
02:24Mark Hamill, Barbara Streisand, Matthew Lillard and Ben Stiller are just some of the famous faces to depart.
02:29Among the people leaving are celebrities.
02:31So, for example, the actress Jamie Lee Curtis, who quoted the serenity prayer in her farewell post,
02:37and the author Stephen King, who wrote Eleven Years Man.
02:41It really changed, grew dark.
02:43Number eight, end of invite only.
02:44When Blue Sky announced its beta, the only way for people to get an account on the platform was to receive an invite code.
02:49This gave the impression the site was a type of exclusive club, which some enjoyed, while others probably didn't.
02:54I have not been invited, so I have not heard of Blue Sky.
02:57For people who have been invited, who have heard about it, what makes it a viable alternative in some people's minds to Twitter?
03:05However, in February 2024, Blue Sky announced the end of invite code.
03:09Now anyone can join and set up their account, just like any other social media site.
03:12What I've noticed, especially over the past several weeks, is that a lot more organizations and people,
03:19they're joining Blue Sky, they're posting news on Blue Sky,
03:22and you can definitely use it much more as a real-time resource for news and information.
03:28Another early feature of Blue Sky when it first became news was its long account handles ending with BSKY.social.
03:34However, that is just a default, as accounts can change it, such as to a website domain.
03:39There's a very big difference between simply signing up for an app, downloading it and installing it,
03:43and then using it day to day, and we're starting to see that momentum build with Blue Sky.
03:47For example, NPR uses at NPR.org as its handle.
03:517. Everything that's public
03:53In June 2024, X took the unusual step of hiding what posts accounts like.
03:58Starting now, it's already in effect, they are hiding your likes so other users can't see what posts you like.
04:04The engineering team says that this is to protect your privacy.
04:08It can still be seen on your own page, but you can't look at what other users click the hard on.
04:12Over in Blue Sky, there's far more transparency as a lot more is public, including likes.
04:16However, it requires another app to see that information for accounts other than your own.
04:20You can also better customize what you see, and it's easy to take your data and move to another platform.
04:27On top of this, people without an account on the platform or logged off can easily see the posts by those that do.
04:32However, this is a default option that can be turned off.
04:34Accounts on Blue Sky can't currently be set to private either.
04:37There's a ton of ways you can customize your feeds as well.
04:40So I think you have a lot more options, and I think users just seem to be quite a bit more happy with the type of control they have on Blue Sky.
04:476. The Blue Sky board
04:48The Blue Sky board is stacked with people who have a long history in tech and the internet.
04:52Jay Graber is the platform's current and first ever CEO.
04:55We've just been telling people how it works, showing them how it's different, and a lot of people are saying they're having a lot more fun here.
05:01She made her name primarily in cryptocurrency and founded the events planning site Happening, Inc.
05:06The COO role is taken by Rose Wang, who was suggested for the role by Graber.
05:10Wang has worked in various tech roles and AI startups.
05:13We have so many new people coming to the platform, and what they care about is, are we having fun, are we making friends again, and do we feel safe?
05:20And so that is what the team is focused on.
05:22Other members of the board include Jeremy Miller, a software developer who helped make the messaging service Jabber, among other feats.
05:29And Mike Masnick, who founded the technology blog site Tector.
05:32I would see these products that, you know, had some elements of decentralization, but didn't really have the full picture, and certainly didn't have users.
05:43However, no single person owns Blue Sky, and the company has stated that no billionaire makes decisions for the company.
05:495. Moneymaking
05:50After raising millions of dollars in funding, Blue Sky needs to find a way to make the social media platform financially successful.
05:57What we believe is that we want to see where people are actually seeing value in the experience.
06:03Some companies like X have opted to sell user data into generative AI to train it.
06:07However, Blue Sky has stated they wouldn't do that.
06:09They do use AI to help run the site, but won't feed your data into it.
06:12In 2024, during an interview with Wired, Graber stated that she wouldn't let the quality of Blue Sky degrade by mass use of advertisements.
06:19We're just so far away from that.
06:21And basically, the whole point of Blue Sky is freedom of exit.
06:24So if we stuff your experience with ads and you hate it, you can leave really easily.
06:29She added that the platform is selling custom domains to users to make cash.
06:33In 2024, Blue Sky also toyed with the idea of subscription accounts that provide users with access to more features, such as higher quality videos and profile customization.
06:41We're also launching subscriptions at the end of this year, because we see so many people who want to support us, and we want to give users tools to help themselves express more.
06:504. Block is back
06:52In October 2024, X followed through with their long-term plan of changing the platform's blocking feature.
06:58We're saying rest in peace to that feature.
07:00Elon Musk posted that users will no longer be able to block other accounts, saying the function makes no sense.
07:08Now, if you block a user, they can still see what you post, but won't be able to interact.
07:12This change caused a backlash from users, leading to $1.2 million to create Blue Sky accounts in a couple of days.
07:18Over on the Blue Butterfly platform, blocking is similar to how most social media websites handle it.
07:23I had one person who thought they were just going to bring all that ish over to Blue Sky and start talking crazy, crazy crap.
07:30And I went, the block, and it was such a good feeling.
07:34Accounts you block can't see what you post, can't interact, and their profiles will be hidden in searches.
07:39However, bear in mind that because of the way Blue Sky works, who you've blocked is public, albeit hidden.
07:44The use of a third-party app can find this information.
07:47On Blue Sky, any user can go and create a labeler, and that can sit on top of our moderation service,
07:54where if you don't want to see political content, there's a labeler that hides all of that content for you, and all you have to do is subscribe to that.
08:03Number three, create your own feeds.
08:04Rather than letting AI and other computing shenanigans choose what you see on your social media feed, you're in control at Blue Sky with the AT protocol.
08:12We want a place where people can express their creativity, and so they can come on and explore an app store, basically, of all these feeds.
08:20It's like a marketplace of feeds, and then you can subscribe to the ones that you're interested in.
08:24You can set what algorithms your feed uses, allowing you to engage more with topics you're interested in.
08:29For example, you can set the feed to show you Napoli pizza, and not the abomination of Altoona-style pizza.
08:35We've been giving them the tools that they want to control their experience.
08:38So when you give people the chance to control their experience online, it's more safe, it's more fun, and they have the control.
08:45It's proving that this is the model that users really want to see.
08:48In 2023, Blue Sky announced they wouldn't be using a master algorithm typically used by most social media sites, and instead have a marketplace to choose from.
08:55If you want to use another's feed or share your own, you can download starter packs that have this feature as a part of it.
09:00We're building an open-source social network that anyone can take into their own hands and build on.
09:06And it's something that is radically different from anything that's been done in social media before.
09:10Number 2. Decentralized.
09:12When Blue Sky was first introduced, one of its key features was its decentralized nature.
09:16We don't control what you see on Blue Sky.
09:18So if you want to move away from the algorithmic feed, there's no single algorithm showing you things.
09:25You can browse a marketplace of algorithms built by other people.
09:28You can build your own algorithm.
09:30Essentially, this means that no single company has complete control over the platform, promoting transparency and collaborative improvements from others.
09:37The platform operates on a network of independent servers rather than a single centralized one.
09:41By having this choice go to users where users can make feeds, that provides a cozier corner to connect with other people with similar interests,
09:49because there's no longer a single dominant algorithm that either promotes the most polarizing posts and or the biggest brands.
09:55This setup provides Blue Sky the option to connect with other decentralized platforms, such as Mastodon.
10:00The decentralized trait is what facilitates features like custom feeds and customizable handles.
10:05However, it's not all good.
10:06The decentralized structure may require some technical knowledge to navigate fully, and content moderation can vary depending on the server.
10:13It's about having a norm and a culture that celebrates more thoughtful dialogue.
10:18And then anything that's close to rude or hate speech, there are different levels of moderation levers that you can pull on Blue Sky that you cannot pull on other platforms that then helps create an even more safe space to talk.
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10:49Number one, Twitter influence.
10:51Back when the platform was still known as Twitter, the site played a big role in Blue Sky's creation.
10:55The whole notion and concept came out of a Jack Dorsey idea, right?
11:00And I'm wondering where you think that separated from what X eventually became.
11:05Yeah, in 2019, Jack had a vision for something better for social media, and so that's why he chose me to build this.
11:12The then Twitter CEO and co-founder, Jack Dorsey, led the creation of the project in 2019.
11:18Twitter paid Blue Sky a service income.
11:20However, when Musk bought the blue bird, the agreement was terminated.
11:23After leaving Twitter, Dorsey joined Blue Sky's board of directors in 2022.
11:27He even touted the app to lawmakers, claiming it could be a possible roadmap for transparency and accountability in social media.
11:34However, by 2024, he had a massive change of heart as he resigned from the board and deleted his Blue Sky account.
11:40In a shocking U-turn to his previous comments about Musk and X, Dorsey praised the former Twitter.
11:45In an interview with Pirate Wires, Dorsey stated his displeasure at Blue Sky's centralized moderation plans,
11:50believing it was moving away from its decentralized roots.
11:53We have these big companies that have single CEOs, which they could be the best people in the world, and some of them are,
12:02but they represent single points of failure.
12:04They represent chokeholds that people can bias toward.
12:09If you could launch any social media site back into relevancy, which would you choose?
12:13Myspace, Bebo, Friendster, or something else? Let us know below.
12:16Web 2.0 is social networking sites like initially Friendster, now Myspace.
12:22It's also anything that's kind of community-based and content that comes from the bottom up rather than top down.
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