Twitter Alternative Bluesky Hits 100k Members Before Exiting Beta – SlashGear

Functionally, at the surface level, Bluesky is still mostly like Twitter. You can post short 256-character messages and view them from others you follow in a timeline. You can also like and share posts. Bluesky doesn’t yet support some of the features Twitter users have come to love like lists and direct messages, but development is ongoing. The underlying mechanisms facilitating its operation couldn’t be more different. 

Behind the scenes, Bluesky is more akin to Mastodon in that it exists atop a decentralized, blockchain-like protocol dubbed AT, designed to give users more control over their experience without the bylaws and whims of corporate overseers. One of the biggest benefits touted by its creators is being able to move your account from Bluesky to another social media platform built on the same protocol without losing any of your account data. 

That means you can bring your followers and posts to another “provider” if you leave. You can also use any domain names you own as your account handle on these networks. “Some of the most important objectives we have been evaluating are portability, scale, and trust. Portability allows people to keep their social life intact even if they switch providers. Scale allows people to participate in global discourse,” writes Bluesky. “And trust is created by giving people insight into what services are doing with their data and how information is being promoted into or removed from their feed.”