Bluesky, the decentralized alternative to X, will build out an optional subscription model for its more avid users—one that it pledges will not look or work like X’s premium plans that bestow blue checkmarks on paying users.
The company announced these plans in a post on Thursday, in which it also reported topping 13 million users and completing a $15 million Series A funding round. Signing up for a subscription will unlock features such as “higher quality video uploads or profile customizations like colors and avatar frames” but will not grant extra visibility or reach for one’s content.
“Bluesky will always be free to use—we believe that information and conversation should be easily accessible, not locked down,” it says. “We won’t uprank accounts simply because they’re subscribing to a paid tier.”
That’s a distinct contrast to how things work at X, where paying for a premium tier not only gets the blue checkmark that once meant the service had verified a user’s identity but also ranks your replies above those of free users. That wrinkle, combined with the fondness of many subscribers for posting misinformation, has turned replies on X into one of the less useful and more toxic parts of the entire social media universe.
Bluesky’s funding raise was led by Blockchain Capital, a San Francisco venture capital fund. Bluesky’s post takes pains to clarify that while this money will help it continue to develop features after such recent additions as direct messaging and video uploads, it does not mean the platform and its AT Protocol are about to be rebuilt as blockchain or cryptocurrency plays.
“This does not change the fact that the Bluesky app and the AT Protocol do not use blockchains or cryptocurrency, and we will not hyperfinancialize the social experience (through tokens, crypto trading, NFTs, etc.),” the post says.
In Blockchain Capital’s own post about its investment, general partner Kinjal Shah (who will join Bluesky’s board) praised Bluesky’s vision of decentralized social networking, in which you can choose from independently created content feeds and move your entire account—from username to followers—to the server of your choice.
“The platform allows you to choose how your feed is curated, creating a more personalized and potentially less contentious social media experience,” she wrote. “You, not a corporation, control your identity, content, social connections, and audience relationships, and the ability to start and join different communities opens the door to more diverse dialogue.”
(Presumably, Blockchain Capital will now add a link to its own Bluesky account to the row of social-media icons on its site.)
That was the vision Twitter itself had when it launched Bluesky as a research project in 2019, but Elon Musk’s chaotic reign at X—in which the entire block tool is about to get turned into a weakened mute function—has recently supercharged interest in Bluesky. As of Thursday evening, it’s the 12th highest-ranked social app in the iOS App Store and the fifth-highest social app in Google’s Play Store.
