Could Bluesky become Twitter 2.0? Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey-led social media site is popular with those fed up with Elon Musk
- Twitter users who were put off by Elon Musk’s takeover could do worse than get on former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s platform Bluesky
- Bluesky works in a very similar way to Twitter, but there is no direct messaging, and potential users need an invite to join the platform
Bluesky, the internet’s hottest members-only spot at the moment, feels a bit like an exclusive club, populated by some very online folks, popular Twitter characters, and fed up ex-users of the Elon Musk-owned platform.
Musk is not on it – and this might be part of the appeal for those longing for the way things were before the Tesla billionaire bought Twitter and upended nearly everything about the social network, from rules against harassment to content moderation and its system for verifying prominent users’ identities.
It also helps that Bluesky grew out of Twitter – a pet project of its former chief executive Jack Dorsey, who still sits on its board of directors.
“It was designed to replace Twitter,” says Sol Messing, who worked at Twitter as a data scientist until January and is now an associate professor at New York University’s Centre for Social Media and Politics. “And you can see it in the way that the system is designed. It works like Twitter.”
But can Bluesky replace Twitter? Prominent Twitter users such as the model Chrissy Teigen, US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Dril, a humorous account that grew out of “weird Twitter” and has been poking fun at Musk since the billionaire took over the platform, are active users.