BlueSky Crosses 13 Million Users and Teases Premium Subscription

Bluesky, one the most credible alternatives to Twitter/X announced yesterday that it has crossed 13 million users since launch. The company also announced a $15M Series A funding round led by Blockchain Capital, which the company plan to use to develop the platform further and introduce a new premium subscription for power users.

Last year, Bluesky had just one million users when it raised its previous seed round in July 2023. Back then, the platform was still invite-only, but that finally changed in February. “We’ve welcomed millions of people from the United States, Brazil, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, and more,” the company said yesterday.

Bluesky certainly continues to attract disenchanted Twitter/X users with features like custom feeds and direct messages, which are two things that Threads, Meta’s X alternative, currently lacks. That’s also why the Bluesky team recently launched a charm offensive on Threads.

Regarding its upcoming paid subscription, the Bluesky team said that it will offer various features such as higher quality video uploads and new profile customization options. However, unlike X, Bluesky won’t give more exposure to posts from paid subscribers.

“Bluesky will always be free to use — we believe that information and conversation should be easily accessible, not locked down. We won’t uprank accounts simply because they’re subscribing to a paid tier,” the company explained.

Bluesky will also continue to invest its decentralized AT Protocol, which allows developers to build other applications on top of Bluesky. The platform also supports federation for self-hosters and developers interested in creating personal data servers outside of Bluesky.

While the Bluesky team has its own vision of what a decentralized network should be, other platforms like Threads, Mastodon, and WordPress are leveraging another decentralized open protocol, ActivityPub, to create the fediverse. Threads recently crossed 200 million monthly active users, and as of today, it’s probably the platform with the biggest chances of making interoperability with other social platforms work.