Faced with a litany of annoying bugs and bewildering product changes, many Twitter users are looking for an alternative—the question has always been, what would that alternative be?
We may now have an answer.
Driving the news: Many of Twitter’s “power-users”—the people who post the most content on the platform—are joining Bluesky, a new competitor to the social media platform.
- Some of the biggest names on Twitter, including US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, TV personality Chrissy Teigen, and comedian (?) Dril, joined this week.
- 360,000 people have downloaded the Bluesky app, and over a million people are on the waitlist to sign up for the (for now) invite-only platform.
Why it matters: Bluesky’s success would be a nail in Twitter’s coffin, in no small part because Bluesky pretty much is Twitter.
- It looks almost the same, it functions almost the same (though no DMs or quote tweets so far), and it’s even backed by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.
Yes, but: There are many platforms competing to become the next Twitter (Mastodon and Post are two others) by luring users upset with Elon Musk’s management to calmer seas, but it’s an open question whether the promise of what is essentially a Musk-free Twitter clone constitutes a viable business model.