What are the main differences between Twitter and Bluesky?
Bluesky has received a surge of interest once again as an alternative to Twitter after Elon Musk limited the amount of content users can view.
Elon Musk finally acquired Twitter last fall after a troubled courtship that he sought to get out of but was eventually forced into keeping his end of the bargin. Since walking through the front doors of the social media platform’s San Francisco headquarters with a sink, he’s been making radical changes to the company.
Twitter’s new CEO has slashed the workforce by around 80 percent leaving around a mere 1,500 to keep the site going. Malcontent with the results and concerns over the direction of the platform have prompted an exodus of advertisers and users. Competitors like Facebook are looking to take advantage of the turmoil while upstart microblog platforms such as Mastodon have seen some users shift their way.
One site that has been gaining popularity recently is Bluesky, so much that the site was overwhelmed from people trying to sign up. The platform was introduced by Jack Dorsey, one of the founders of Twitter, in 2019. However, he does not have hands-on role in its development.
What are the main differences between Twitter and Bluesky?
Bluesky works a lot like a basic-form of Twitter from the early days of the social media platform. You can follow and be followed, posts appear in a timeline and you can repost and quote others’ posts. The site will also give you suggestions of other users that you may want to follow. However, there is currently no direct messaging, video or live streaming.
Like Mastodon, Bluesky is meant to be decentralized, so that users will not be locked into a single social media platform. Unfortunately, there is only one network until other platforms adopt its protocol so that it can interoperate with them.
But the idea is that in the future you’ll have full control of your data and be able to pick up and go to another social media community within the network, each of which has its own moderation team, that more suits your style. Although you’ve jumped to a new platform, you will still be able to communicate with and tune into other communities that are part of the network.
Bluesky is by invite only for now
Bluesky has over 100,000 users including some well-known individuals. But don’t expect to become one of them just yet. It is still in a testing phase and you need an invite from an existing user to join or sign up for the wait list to get one. Current users are only given the opportunity to bring a new person into the fold on a limited basis, one every couple of weeks.