(New York) The Bluesky social network, backed by co-founder and former Twitter boss Jack Dorsey, is gaining popularity amid concerns surrounding the bluebird network and its management by Elon Musk.
According to the Forbes magazine site, citing data from the Data.ai firm, the Bluesky application has been downloaded 360,000 times and is currently ahead of some popular platforms such as LinkedIn, Bing or Zoom in the ranking of the Apple App Store.
The project was created and initially funded by Twitter itself in 2019, when Jack Dorsey was still its chief executive.
Launched in February on Apple’s iOS operating system and at the end of March on Android, Bluesky is very similar to Twitter in its presentation, even if it is a decentralized platform, like Mastodon, another social network that has been talked about in recent months.
The fact that the platform is decentralized means in particular that it is possible to create separate applications within Bluesky and that not all content can be controlled by a single entity.
Bluesky is, for the moment, accessible only by invitation, and requires registering beforehand on a waiting list, which has more than a million candidates, according to Forbes.
Several personalities have recently joined the platform, including the elected Democrat for the House of Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or the model Chrissy Teigen, who each have more than ten million subscribers on Twitter.
The hussar management of Elon Musk since his takeover of Twitter at the end of October, with in particular the dismissal of three quarters of the workforce, raises questions and has scalded many advertisers.
During a discussion on Bluesky on Saturday, Jack Dorsey took advantage of a question from a user to criticize the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk, whom he was nevertheless one of the few to support when he announced his takeover offer a year ago.
“ It’s gone into a spin”, estimated the co-founder of the blue bird network. “But it’s done now, and all we can do is build something to prevent it from happening again. So I’m glad that Jay (Graber, Bluesky’s general manager) and his team are here to build it. »
In addition to Bluesky and Mastodon, other young social networks are trying to take advantage of Twitter’s deteriorating image, including Post, Substack Notes (an offshoot of the blogging site Substack) and T2.
