Bluesky Is Now Open to All, but Is It Too Late?

Bluesky, the invite-only Twitter alternative and last year's hot new thing, is now open to everyone. But is it too late?

When Elon Musk started to gut Twitter last year and remake it in his own image, Bluesky stood out as a great alternative for the fleeing hordes. For a start, it was created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Also, it is designed to be decentralized, i.e., not controlled by one single company like Twitter or Instagram. Bluesky has been popular within its closed garden of over 3 million invited users, but now it's open to everyone. Can it compete with the decentralized, federated Mastodon, which is kind of "supported" by Meta's Threads?

"Bluesky's decision to forge their own federated system instead of using the more common ActivityPub could represent a game-changer, much like how Grooveshark's user-upload capability set it apart from other music services. By not relying on established protocols, Bluesky could offer new kinds of interoperability and user control, potentially leading to a more diverse and rich social media environment," Sam Tarantino, co-founder of music-streaming service Grooveshark, told Lifewire via email.

Federation Central

Since Twitter began its slow-motion meltdown last year, the social landscape has changed quite a bit. Whereas Twitter was the place to be, because it was the place where everything was happening, now there's not just one place for everything. Instead, we have a growing ecosystem of alternatives, including Mastodon and Threads, and we're even seeing the resurgence of personal blogs.

This is largely powered by ActivityPub. You know how when you send an email to somebody, it doesn't matter if they're on Gmail, Hey, or any other service? You don't even have to think about it—you just send the mail and it arrives. That's what ActivityPub does for social and other web-publishing services. It makes them interoperable.

The best-known ActivityPub platform is Mastodon, which is a network of interlinked, independently run servers. This interoperability has made it possible for FaceBook's giant Twitter replacement, Threads, to work with Mastodon.

In the future, if and when Threads' promised federation is complete, Mastodon users will be able to follow Threads users, and vice versa, and Threads users will even be able to quit Threads entirely, but take their followers with them.

Enter Bluesky, which is similarly decentralized. The difference is that Bluesky uses its own networking tech, called the AT Protocol. This protocol makes it possible for third-party services to interoperate with Bluesky and with each other.

The trouble is that this splits the federated social world into two. It's like VHS and Betamax, Blu-ray vs HD-DVD, or AOL vs CompuServe. They do the same thing, but they don't work together. To re-use our email simile, it's like Gmail and Exchange were incompatible, and you couldn't send emails between them.

So why would you pick Bluesky over Mastodon when the latter is already a proven platform, with plenty of servers to choose from, and already interoperable with other non-Mastodon ActivityPub services?

You Get to Choose

The easy answer is don't. If you're already on Mastodon, then just stick to that. If you're into celebrities or influencers, they're either there already, or you can follow them via Threads—although it's not particularly easy to do that right now.

Mastodon is here to stay. It's widely supported, and you can choose a server that suits your tastes, interests, or politics while staying connected to the whole.

On the other hand, if you still haven't quit Twitter, Bluesky is tempting because the signup is easy. You just give it your email, date of birth, phone number, and you're in. No choosing a server, no weird, annoying steps to perform to follow someone on a different server, etc.

And while Mastodon is a standard that anybody can use, that doesn't mean it's perfect. The creators of Mastodon have strong ideas about how to keep the network free of the kinds of troubles that plague Twitter, which means that some features, like quote posts, may never be implemented. And the federated nature of Mastodon isn't well-suited to moderation.

Meanwhile, Bluesky has some surprising advocates.

"You could take another approach and consider that ActivityPub has problems that aren't being solved, and maybe a fresh start by smart devs, which they are, might get us to a better place sooner," Dave Winer, inventor of RSS, co-inventor of podcasting, and blogging advocate, said on Mastodon.

So, just pick the one you like more, the one where you can find the people you want to follow. Or just use both and wait to see which one ends up the best for your purposes. That's the beauty of choice and competition—you're not stuck with one default option.