Bluesky facts for kids

{{Infobox website | name = Bluesky | logo = Bluesky Logo.svg | logo_size = 125 | logo_alt = A simplified silhouette of a butterfly, with two symmetric pairs of wings, colored with a sky-blue gradient | logo_caption = Bluesky logo since December 2023 | screenshot = File:Bluesky_profile_of_Wikipedia_(March_2025).png | screenshot_size = 275 | screenshot_alt = Web interface showing a user account on Bluesky. To the left, a list of different modes. In the center, a banner and profile description above a feed with posts and attached media. To the right, a list of user-selected custom feeds and trending topics. | caption = Screenshot of the Bluesky desktop interface, featuring the account of the English Wikipedia, March 2025 | type = Social networking service | language = 41 languages{{Efn|{{hlist|Aragonese|Asturian|Basque|Cantonese|Catalan|Chinese (Simplified and Traditional)|Danish|Dutch|English (American and British)|Esperanto|Finnish|French|Frisian|Galician|German|Greek|Hindi|Hungarian|Indonesian|Interlingua|Irish|Italian|Japanese|Khmer|Korean|Nepali|Polish|Portuguese (Brazilian and European)|Romanian|Russian|Scottish Gaelic|Spanish|Swedish|Thai|Turkish|Ukrainian|Vietnamese|[[Welsh language|Welsh}}}}

| founded =

| headquarters = Seattle, Washington, United States | area_served = Worldwide | owner = Bluesky Social, PBC | founder = Jack Dorsey | CEO = Jay Graber | key_people = Jay Graber, Jeremie Miller, Mike Masnick, and Kinjal Shah | website =
| registration = Required

| users =

| launch_date = February 6, 2024 (public release) | current_status = Active

| native_clients =

| programming_language = TypeScript, Go

| module =

}} Bluesky is a social media app from the United States. It lets people share short posts that can include text, pictures, and videos. Bluesky Social PBC, a company that aims to do good for the public, owns the app.

Bluesky was built using a special open system called the AT Protocol. This system helps create social networks where users have more control. Bluesky wants users to be able to choose how they see posts and what rules they follow.

The app has a "marketplace of algorithms." This means users can pick or even create their own feeds to see posts they like. Users can also manage their own moderation tools and labeling services. There are also "starter packs" that help users quickly follow many accounts from a certain community.

The AT Protocol also lets users use their own website names as their usernames. This helps people know if an account is real and belongs to who it says it does.

Bluesky started in 2019 as a project within Twitter. It became its own company in 2021. The app's development sped up in 2022 after Twitter was bought by Elon Musk. Bluesky first launched in February 2023 as an invite-only service. It opened to everyone in February 2024.

How Bluesky Started

Early Ideas and Research

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Bluesky

In 2019, Jack Dorsey, who was the CEO of Twitter at the time, announced the idea for Bluesky. He wanted to explore making social media more open and decentralized. This meant giving users more control over their information and what they see.

Twitter brought together experts in decentralized technology to discuss how to achieve this goal. They worked on finding or creating an open standard for social media.

In early 2021, Bluesky was in a research phase. About 50 people from the decentralized technology community helped explore different options. This led to Jay Graber being hired in August 2021 to lead the project. She started developing a new system called the "Authenticated Data Experiment" (ADX), which was designed for decentralization. Twitter provided $13 million to help Bluesky begin its development.

Becoming an Independent Company

In October 2021, Jay Graber made Bluesky an independent company called "Bluesky Social." She felt it was important for Bluesky to operate separately from Twitter. In February 2022, Bluesky Social became a benefit corporation. This means its goal is to develop open technologies for public conversation. The company hired its first three employees in March 2022.

After Elon Musk bought Twitter, Twitter and Bluesky Social officially separated. This did not stop Bluesky Social's work, but it did affect its future funding. Bluesky Social then developed the AT Protocol and launched a basic social media service using it. They started a waitlist for this service in October 2022.

Invite-Only Testing Phase

Bluesky launched its invite-only testing version for iOS phones in February 2023. It became available for Android phones in April 2023. Soon after the Android app launched, Bluesky had about 50,000 users. The code for the app was made available for anyone to see and use in May 2023.

Bluesky gained a lot of attention because of its connection to Twitter and Jack Dorsey. Many different communities, including artists and various subcultures, joined the platform early on. These early users helped shape the platform's culture and its strong moderation features.

In July 2023, Bluesky Social announced it had raised $8 million to help grow its team, manage operations, and further develop the AT Protocol. The company also confirmed its status as a benefit corporation.

In December 2023, Bluesky Social introduced its new company logo. It was a blue butterfly, inspired by users who were already using the butterfly emoji to represent their Bluesky accounts.

Public Launch and Growth

The total number of users on Bluesky increased a lot after its public launch in February 2024.

Bluesky opened its registrations to everyone on February 6, 2024. This was one year after it first launched as an invite-only app. Soon after, it allowed other apps to connect to its network through the AT Protocol. This means users can build their own apps within the protocol.

On May 4, 2024, Jack Dorsey announced he was no longer on Bluesky Social's board. Bluesky Social confirmed his departure the next day.

In October 2024, Bluesky announced it had raised $15 million in funding. The company promised not to add cryptocurrency to the app. They also said they would not fill the network with ads.

How Many People Use Bluesky

Growth During Testing

Bluesky grew quickly during its invite-only testing phase in 2023. It reached 1 million registered users by September 2023. By November of that year, it had more than 2 million users.

When it launched to the public in February 2024, the app already had over 3 million users.

Growth After Public Launch

Bluesky has seen periods of fast growth and slower times since its public launch in February 2024. These changes often happened when there were big news events or changes at X (formerly Twitter).

After its public launch, many Japanese-speaking users joined Bluesky. This was partly because famous Japanese social media personalities started using the platform.

In August 2024, after X (Twitter) was blocked in Brazil, Bluesky gained over four million users in less than two weeks. It became the most popular app in Brazil's App Store and Play Store. By September 16, Bluesky announced it had reached ten million users.

In October 2024, X (Twitter) made changes to its features. After this, over 1.2 million users joined Bluesky in just two days. On October 24, Bluesky Social announced it had reached 13 million users.

Growth After the 2024 U.S. Election

In the weeks after the 2024 United States presidential election on November 5, 2024, millions of X (Twitter) users from the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada joined Bluesky. By November 13, Bluesky had reached 15 million users. It was growing by about 1 million users per day and became a top app in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in the United States.

By November 19, Bluesky officially had over 20 million users. This meant its user base had tripled in just three months. This big increase also led to many more moderation reports. Bluesky Safety noted that they received over 42,000 reports in one day, which was a record high. The company had to add more servers to handle the increased activity.

By the end of January 2025, the number of users had grown to 30 million. By April 2025, the site had over 35 million users. On April 24, 2025, the site had a major outage for about an hour.

Even though the total number of users keeps growing, how often people use the app has gone down since the election. However, it is still much higher than before the election.

How Bluesky Works

Company Structure

Bluesky Social, also known as Bluesky Social PBC, is a private company. Its main office is in Seattle, Washington. However, the company sees itself as "decentralized" without one main physical office. As a benefit corporation, Bluesky Social can use its profits for public good. It does not have to only focus on making money for its owners. The CEO, Jay Graber, and other employees own the company.

As of late 2024, the company gets its money mainly from investors. Bluesky does not have ads on its service. Jay Graber has said that Bluesky will not "enshittify the network with ads." The company is thinking about offering an optional paid service for users.

Software and System

Bluesky released its open source code in May 2022 for an early version of its system. This system was first called Authenticated Data Experiment (ADX) and is now known as the Authenticated Transfer (AT) Protocol. The team made its code public so that everyone could see how it was being developed.

The AT Protocol works with three main parts: a Personal Data Server (PDS), a Relay, and an AppView. A PDS stores user data. A Relay collects data from many PDS hosts and puts it into one stream. AppViews then take this data and show it to users.

Most of Bluesky's features are available through the AT Protocol. However, direct messages (DMs) are currently handled by a central service run by Bluesky Social. The goal is for DMs to also become decentralized and encrypted in the future.

Features for Users

A post by the official account of Catalan Wikipedia

Bluesky is similar to Twitter in how it works. Users can send short posts with up to 300 characters of text, pictures, and videos. Users can reply to posts, repost them, quote them, and like them. Some users call posts on the platform "skeets," which is a mix of "sky" and "tweets."

Bluesky lets users customize their experience much more than other platforms. Users can choose their own feeds that show posts based on different algorithms. They can also use custom moderation services.

Bluesky promotes a "marketplace of algorithms" through its custom feeds. Users can choose or create these feeds to see posts related to specific topics. Bluesky shows a list of popular feeds on its website and app. Users can also create "starter packs," which are lists of users related to a topic or community. These packs let others quickly follow many accounts at once.

Moderation on Bluesky can also be customized by users. People can create and use their own services with their own rules for labeling or hiding posts. For example, some services can label posts that contain generative artificial intelligence. Users can also create custom lists to mute or block accounts. Bluesky made its own moderation software, called "Ozone," available to the public in March 2024.

Direct messaging (DMs) was added in May 2024. This allows users to send private text messages to each other and react to them with emojis.

In August 2024, Bluesky added "anti-toxicity" features. These allow users to separate quote posts from their original posts and hide replies to their own posts.

In December 2024, Bluesky introduced a "Trending Topics" feature in its testing phase. This feature shows users words or phrases that are currently popular. It was updated in April 2025 as part of a new "Explore" feature, which also suggests accounts and starter packs.

On March 10, 2025, Bluesky added support for videos up to 3 minutes long. It also added more spam filters for DMs.

On April 21, 2025, Bluesky added a system for account verification. Bluesky verifies "notable" accounts itself. It also lets certain "Trusted Verifiers" verify other accounts. Trusted Verifiers have a special blue checkmark, and verified accounts have a circular blue checkmark.

Rules and Regulations

Age Verification in the UK

In July 2025, Bluesky started requiring age verification for users in the UK. This was to follow the UK's Online Safety Act 2023. Users under 18, or those who do not verify their age, cannot see content marked as adult. They also cannot use direct messages.

Blocking in Turkey

In early April 2025, courts in Turkey ordered 44 Bluesky accounts to be blocked. By mid-April, Bluesky hid 18 accounts and 2 posts from people accessing them from Turkey. This moderation is done using Bluesky's labeling system. This system automatically applies both global and region-specific moderation rules.

See Also

• Comparison of microblogging and similar services
• Comparison of software and protocols for distributed social networking