In recent days, there have been many messages from X users (formerly known as Twitter) stating that they are leaving the platform. And many decided to switch to Bluesky, a very similar platform in terms of interface and user experience, but

It’s getting too big. Bluesky’s popularity has increased significantly, and recently close to a million people are signing up every day. It is estimated that there are currently around 19.2 million users; This is a remarkable figure that is absolutely surprising due to its growth rate.

But Threads is getting bigger. But this number is small if we compare it with the growth of Threads. So far in November, Threads has grown as much as Bluesky’s user base; This was confirmed by its CEO Adam Mosseri. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated at the financial results presentation that Threads was growing at a rate of one million new users per day.

How does Bluesky work?. Unlike Fediverso and its main representative, Mastodon, Bluesky is not completely decentralized. It is based on the AT Protocol (atproto), a protocol that allows you to create your own nodes that are part of Bluesky’s so-called Federation Architecture. This platform is decentralized in terms of data portability and account management, but in practice it is more centralized because, among other things, Bluesky manages and controls the main servers on which its operation depends. Bluesky’s architecture consists of PDS, Relays and AppViews.

Hello PDS. As developer Gavin Anderegg explains, anyone can create their own node or Personal Data Server (PDS) where they can store both identity keys and their content, but it’s not entirely simple and comes at a cost (around $15/month). This makes it possible for us to have full control over our data and what we publish, and to move it to another server if we need it later. This way, Matadon is much bulkier, but one thing happens: the only server that actively accesses the PDS and does something productive with them is the one that Bluesky controls.

Relays and Application Views. If PDSs are something like websites, Relays are like Google: they crawl and monitor PDSs to index new content, but setting up one yourself requires you to have plenty of available space in the first place. Specifically, it’s about 4.5 TB to start with, and according to developers’ estimates, the needs are growing at a rate of 18 GB per day. And that’s true at Bluesky’s current size: As the number of users increases, so will its growth rate. Relays do nothing to display this data: what’s called Application Views take care of this, which gives people the impression that Bluesky (the user interface) is there, but nothing would happen if it weren’t for the other two components. There are even more components involved, but even though Bluesky is working to become fully decentralized, it still has a lot of work to do, according to Anderegg.

What about the federal universe? Unlike Bluesky, Fediverso is completely decentralized and consists of independent servers (instances) communicating with each other. Anyone can create their own server and connect to the ActivityPub protocol, both through Mastodon and other platforms such as PixelFed (alternative to Instagram), Pleroma (similar to Mastodon, alternative to X/Threads) or PeerTube (alternative to YouTube). Unlike Bluesky, ActivityPub solutions like Mastodon are very cheap to launch (unless you’re famous, things get more expensive) and you have full control over the entire instance; This makes this alternative preferable if you are looking for complete decentralization.

Bluesky makes (almost) no money. Bluesky’s other big problem is that it is free and intends to stay that way. They recently accepted a $15 million investment, but that round was led by investors with a worrying profile. Bluesky’s business model focuses on charging fees for offering personalized domain names; This does not seem to be enough, especially when the number of users increases significantly. There are plans to potentially include ads here, but Bluesky appears to have no intention of integrating them at this time, and in fact the network’s own partially decentralized architecture complicates such a thing.

in Xataka | I left Twitter to Bluesky, and his real problem, or rather my problem: managing my ego