Bluesky has been getting a lot of media attention recently, so it’s no surprise that people are wondering how it compares to Twitter/X. The two micro-blogging platforms share a lot of similarities, but also differ in some important ways, and in this blog we’ll explain exactly how they stack up against each other.
Table of Contents
Twitter, Bluesky, and their Shared History
How are Twitter and Bluesky Similar?
How are Twitter and Bluesky Different?
Twitter, Bluesky, and their Shared History
If Bluesky and Twitter seem to have a lot in common, it’s because Bluesky started life as an internal project at Twitter in 2019. The idea behind the project was to create a social media service like Twitter/X that could be open source and decentralized, rather than being owned and managed by a single corporate entity.
The result of this experiment was the AT Protocol, a kind of standard framework that can be used by anybody to build decentralized and interoperable social media platforms. Bluesky was built by Twitter/X as an initial proof-of-concept to show how the AT Protocol could work, and eventually in 2021 it was spun out into an independent company called Bluesky Social PBC (Public Benefit Company).
How are Twitter and Bluesky Similar?
Both platforms offer the same essential functionality. Users can post their own content (text, images, video) which is displayed on a timeline on their own profile page, which can include a bio, profile picture, and header image.
Posts on Twitter/X can be 280 characters in length, or up to 25,000 for X Premium subscribers, while Bluesky offers no similar premium subscription service, and all users face the same 300 character limit for their posts. Posts can include dynamic mentions of other users on each platform, by prefacing their username with the @ symbol, and users can reply to each other’s posts to create discussion threads, or simply repost to their own timelines.
Both platforms also provide users with a timeline consisting of content from other users - either those you have chosen to follow, or those the algorithm thinks you might like. Other similarities include the use of hashtags to categorize and discover posts on related topics, and the ability to create lists of users.
So, in terms of the microblogging fundamentals, Bluesky and Twitter/X offer similar capabilities.
How are Twitter and Bluesky Different?
Once you look beyond those basic features it becomes clear that Twitter/X is a much more mature platform than Bluesky, and offers a far richer feature-set. For example, Twitter/X has great Trending Topics functionality that shows you what’s happening around the world, in real-time, which is part of what helps it to deliver on its promise of being the world’s Town Square.
Bluesky has only just added a beta version of its own Trending Topics feature, and at present it feels much more basic, with limited results and no ability to focus on local trends rather than global.
Twitter/X also offers a far wider range of content types for users. This includes relatively simple things, such as the ability to add polls to posts, through to more sophisticated formats such as Spaces, which are audio discussions that can be live-streamed to a wide audience. Users can also easily live-stream video through their profile.
A key difference between the two services is how verification works. On Twitter/X anybody can get a verified “Blue Tick” if they subscribe to the premium service. On Bluesky, verification is only available to people who own their own website or URL, and the process works by changing your Bluesky handle to the URL of your website.
The main difference between the two social networks is in their user-base. Twitter/X has been around since 2006 and has had plenty of time to build up a substantial number of users, currently estimated to be at around 336 million, whereas Bluesky has around 25 million.
Due to the network effect, this means it’s easier to build up a following on Twitter/X simply because it has significantly more people using it. New users to Bluesky will find that it can take longer to find an audience, and consequently engagement will be much lower than they might expect from other social channels.
At present, Bluesky is essentially a basic version of Twitter/X with a much smaller user community, and for that reason brand social media managers may see limited value in it. However, Bluesky is gradually attracting an increasing number of users who are looking for a different experience to other more established social platforms, so it’s certainly worth experimenting with.
