X competitor Bluesky is now open to everyone

Bluesky has officially announced ditching its invite-only system. The platform has been operating in private beta since its inception to manage growth, but it’s now open for everyone to sign up.

Bluesky is a decentralized social media platform founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in 2021. The platform, which was a Twitter internal project at first, gained significant traction following Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter (later rebranded to X) and the drastic changes he made to the company. Bluesky is now a venue for any X user who wants to avoid coping with Elon Musk’s rules.

You can now sign up for Bluesky without a waitlist

Bluesky launched in beta last year, and it’s now estimated to have over 3 million users. The platform can now expect to host even more users by ditching the waitlist. Of course, it still has a long way to go to reach X’s 556 million active monthly users.

Decentralized platforms seem to be the future of social media. These platforms claim to be more secure and transparent than conventional centrally-controlled platforms. Reduced censorship and protection of free speech are other perks of decentralized platforms.

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber also believes the future of social media is open and decentralized. As he told Engadget, “This is something that we think is good for the public conversation overall.”

Bluesky is taking a different approach than Mastodon

While most decentralized platforms like Mastodon run on ActivityPub protocol, Bluesky has taken a different patch by laying out an exclusive standard dubbed “AT Protocol.” Later this month, Bluesky will let developers host their servers on AT Protocol. Bluesky CEO described AT Protocol as “an API that’s permanently open” and enables developers’er’s creativity flow.

The move allows developers to offer a unique experience to users that’s not controlled by the company. Graber said this would be a slow and smooth process to ensure the “network doesn’t change overall overnight.”

Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads are three platforms that claim to be X’s alternative with a similar user experience. Meanwhile, Threads has over 130 million users; the rest are still struggling to increase their user base. Meta would also allow Threads posts to appear on Mastodon and any other service that relies on ActivityPub to catch up with the decentralization trend.