What to know
- Bluesky started in 2019 as an experimental project by then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
- Bluesky launched as an invite-only iOS beta app in February 2023, and then a similar launch for Android a few months later.
- Bluesky became available to the general user in February 2024.
Bluesky is all over the news because of the millions of users that are signing up on the platform lately. But before Bluesky was a fully formed butterfly taking on the twitter bird, it was in a well-protected cocoon for quite a while.
Bluesky first started as a project in 2019 by then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. It was an experiment to see what a decentralized Twitter-like platform would look like. Twitter even provided initial funding and research for Blusky. By 2021, Bluesky had become an independent company.
After Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, Bluesky’s ties to Twitter were severed for good. Fortunately, Bluesky was by then ready to spread its wings, and went through a period of rapid development that saw it launch as an invite-only iOS app in February 2023.
A few months later it was also launched for Android which saw it gain some fame. By the middle of 2023, it had raised $8 million that allowed it to grow even further. The Bluesky app came out of its invite-only system and became available to the general user in February 2024. Since then, it’s been growing steadily. But nothing could have given it a bigger boost than the recent change in X’s terms of service that said it would start using user’s data to train its AI, Grok.
Bluesky has had a chaotic and uncertain rise. But thanks to well-intentioned investors, their skilled team, and a few historical shifts, it’s come out as the fastest growing social media app today.
