Bluesky has seen massive growth in the weeks following the US elections. As of Tuesday, there are 24 million users on the social media platform. With great commitment comes great responsibility, which means Bluesky CEO Jay Graber has her work cut out for her to keep her promise to not “hype” the platform with ads while also funding its explosive growth.
On Tuesday, during WIRED’s Big Interview event in San Francisco, he promised to deliver on that promise, saying the company is still “focused on making sure it’s a good experience (for users) as we scale,” he said.
Enshittification, as it is known, usually occurs when social media platforms expand and need to squeeze money from users to please investors and keep the lights on. Since Bluesky doesn’t plan to run ads, WIRED senior writer Kate Knibbs asked: How does Bluesky plan to make money? “Subscriptions are the first step,” Graber said, referring to a plan make users pay a regular fee for the ability to upload higher quality videos, for example, or access certain personalization features.
With this in mind, Graber admitted that recent user growth has delayed the launch of premium subscriptions. When asked if the feature would be available soon, he responded: “That was the plan, but we’ve had a lot of growth recently.”
Bluesky was incubated as a social media experiment within Twitter, although it became completely independent before Elon Musk bought its former parent company and changed its name to X. After Musk’s purchase of X, Bluesky received a raise in new users as an alternative to social networks. , although after the US elections in November, during which Musk provided strong support for Donald Trump, Bluesky began attracting millions of new users.
Jay Graber and Kate Knibbs in The Big InterviewPhotography: Tristan deBrauwere
During the post-election surge, Bluesky’s 20-person full-time staff sometimes struggled to handle the influx, and the site temporarily crashed a few times. As growth continues, Bluesky is now better equipped to handle its user base without interruption. During a recent interview with Casey Newton for the Platformer newsletterthe company said it had increased the number of content moderators it works with, expanding from 25 to 100 contractors.
One of Bluesky’s distinguishing features is the decentralized platform’s focus on customization and user control. It’s easy to adjust what you want to see through user lists, starter packs, and muted words. Advanced users even have the option to set up their own website hosting providers, if they decide to go through the process.
Although Bluesky currently captures the zeitgeist, Meta’s Threads, another alternative to Twitter/X, keeps growing too and is still much larger in size. Alec Booker, a spokesperson for Meta, told WIRED via email that more than 35 million new users signed up for Threads in November. Feeling the competitive pressure, Meta has announced plans to more customization options to be added to Threads.