10 things to know about BlueSky Social: The Twitter alternative that is creating a buzz

BlueSky Social has recently taken the world of social media by storm by emerging as an alternative to Twitter, and many celebrities have joined it. Know what it is and how you can join it.

BlueSky Social is an alternative to Twitter that was founded by Jack Dorsey. (Bloomberg)

BlueSky Social, the alternative to Elon Musk's Twitter, has been creating quite a buzz in global social media circles. Amidst Twitter's mass layoffs, removal of verification and introduction of Twitter Blue, more and more people are searching for alternatives to the tweeting app, and this is where BlueSky Social comes in. In 2019, Jack Dorsey, who was then the CEO of Twitter, launched the Bluesky initiative, a transparent social protocol. However, BlueSky Social has been operating as a separate company since 2021. Over the recent months it has generated enough headlines to even convince celebrities and other eminent personalities to join this new social media platform that promises to provide greater freedom to users to operate. This is unlike Twitter where control is centralized and all user data is with the company.

10 things to know about BlueSky Social

1. BlueSky Social is a decentralized social media app developed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Jay Graber serves as the CEO.

2. The platform is built using an open-source framework using the proprietary AT protocol which is a transparent network allowing users to see how it is built and what's in development.

3. The app is visually similar to Twitter, allowing users to create a profile, post short messages of up to 300 characters as well as share images. Due to having ‘invite only' access, fine details about the social media app are not widely known. Although CEO Jay Graber admits that BlueSky Social looks like Twitter, it plans to be a decentralized system, allowing people to develop apps and communities within the platform.

4. The “decentralized' platform of the app means that all the data is stored on independent servers instead of servers owned by the company. Moreover, users can create their own servers and switch to them, without losing any data, according to Graber.

5. The main difference between BlueSky Social and Twitter is when it comes to moderation. The social media platform has composable moderation policies with the help of third-party providers. Although it will use an automated filtering system, the platform will also enable Community labelling, allowing users to manually label things. Fear is being expressed in many quarters that this will promote misinformation on the platform.

6. BlueSky Social is not the first initiative attempting to create an open and decentralized social media platform. Several apps such as Mastodon, Steemit, Gab, DTube and Minds have also been developed using this platform.

7. How can you join it? Right now, BlueSky Social is at an “Invite Only” stage and an invite code is required to join the platform for which there is a waitlist. You can sign up to be on the waitlist via email.

8. Existing users receive one invite code every two weeks that they're on the Bluesky app which they can use to invite new users to the platform. Shockingly, invite codes for the platform are being sold for hundreds of dollars on Ebay and Reddit!

9. Who is on BlueSky Social? Several celebrities and eminent personalities have recently joined the social platform. James Gunn, Chrissy Teigen, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Kumail Nanjiani, Christopher McQuarrie, Dril and Edgar Wright are some of the personalities.

10. The app's beta version was made available for download for iOS users in February and for Android users in April. Since then, BlueSky Social has been downloaded over 360,000 times.