When Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey tasked an internal team at the social media platform with developing an open and decentralized protocol in 2019, he envisioned a restart of sorts. Dorsey longed for the early days of the company, saying social media incentives had driven platforms to focus on “content and conversations that [spark] controversy and outrage.”
Five years later, that vision is taking shape with Bluesky, the social media platform born out of Twitter (now called X under Elon Musk’s ownership). Bluesky, which became an independent company in 2021, has amassed millions of users since opening up to the public earlier this year.
Proponents of decentralization say the timing may finally be right for open platforms as social media moves toward a more fragmented future.
“Centralized organizations cannot serve the needs of diverse communities,” Bluesky COO Rose Wang told Yahoo Finance. “It’s why I think users have felt like they’ve been left behind.”
Bluesky’s more than 24 million users represent a fraction of X’s estimated user base, but the platform has seen significant growth following President-elect Donald Trump’s election win.
Last month, Bluesky remained near the top of Apple’s App Store, and the app’s daily downloads even briefly pushed past those of X.
Bluesky’s platform is built on top of the “AT Protocol,” a decentralized, open-source technology that allows users control their online experiences.
Unlike Meta’s (META) suite of apps or Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, where the company holds the keys to the algorithm and dictates the platform’s experience, decentralized platforms allow users themselves to shape their experiences, including content moderation.
“It reminds me of the promise of the early internet, where everybody is a publisher of their own content — very egalitarian,” said Damian Rollison, director of market insights at marketing platform SOCi.
The company’s ambitions extend beyond social media. Instead of confining users to a single platform, it aims to allow users to move their identities seamlessly from platform to platform.
“The idea is you can put Reddit, Facebook, dating apps, Goodreads, anything on top of our protocol,” Wang said. “Why do you want to do that? Because then your identity, your data can actually move from platform to platform, and you’re not locked into these walled gardens. You own your identity on Bluesky versus having the platforms own your identity.”
The Bluesky app logo is displayed on a smartphone with the Bluesky icon together with X visible in the background in this photo illustration on Nov. 24, 2024. (Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images) ·NurPhoto via Getty Images
According to Shannon McGregor, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media, the push for more distributed control of online experiences has been gaining steam.
A recent survey by Ipsos analyzing the role of digital platforms in eight countries found that users have a negative perception of social media and are increasingly opting for “platform ambivalence,” turning to multiple outlets for news and information.
“Wrapped up in [the migration to alternative platforms] is the desire to be in a space that’s not controlled by a single billionaire,” McGregor said. “I think people have a desire to not be sort of at the whims of both large companies, but also singular figures.”
Bluesky isn’t the first in its quest to shake up the social media landscape. A handful of companies have attempted to reinvent the online experience.
Mastodon most recently positioned itself as the Twitter alternative following Musk’s acquisition of the company in 2022. And right-wing platforms like Parler and Gab have become popular alternatives for more extremist views.
Trump himself started Truth Social (DJT) after his Facebook and Twitter accounts were suspended in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
But none of those platforms have attracted a large enough user base to compete with X or Meta’s apps.
While Bluesky now claims more than 24 million users, that figure pales in comparison to the 275 million monthly active users on Meta’s Threads.
“For a long time Meta has spent a lot of their money buying rivals,” McGregor said. “So even if there were other places that people might have gone, [Meta] bought those places, incorporated them into their own suite of apps. There’s been business practices that have made other options not possible.”
There are signs that may be changing. Under the Biden administration, the Department of Justice has brought cases against Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), and Alphabet to rein in what it views as anticompetitive behavior in the tech sector.
Incoming Federal Communications Chair Brendan Carr indicated the agency plans to take “broad ranging actions” against major tech firms, including a review of Section 230, the law that shields companies from liability for third-party content on their platform, in a letter he penned last month.
Rollison said all of this suggests a potential opening for a decentralized platform like Bluesky to finally gain hold.
“There are going to be platforms that serve a variety of needs and adhere to a variety of people’s goals and values,” Rollison said. “That calcification of services centered in a few very large platforms probably does not serve consumers very well in the long term. I think we’re starting to see that break up.”
Akiko Fujita is an anchor and reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X @AkikoFujita.
