Bluesky Opens to the Public ⇥ washingtonpost.com

Will Oremus, Washington Post:

“I didn’t see the future,” [Jay] Graber said in an interview Monday, referring to the subsequent ouster of Dorsey as Twitter’s CEO and sale of the company to Elon Musk. “But as I like to say, the captain can always sink the ship.”

Today, Bluesky is opening to the public after nearly a year as an invitation-only app, with Graber as its CEO. With a little over 3 million users, it’s mounting a long-shot bid to take on the company that spawned it — and to set social media on a course that no single captain can control.

Bluesky does not need to become more popular than behemoths like Twitter or Threads to be successful. Twitter itself proved that: it was big, sure, but despite operating nowhere near the scale of Facebook or Instagram, it was disproportionately influential.

Bluesky’s interpretation of a text-based social network is compelling. It is familiar, fast, and feature-rich, without being overwhelming. I just wish there was a good Mac app. If you have not had an opportunity to check it out, now is a great time. I will bury my five unused invitation codes alongside the 99 Gmail invites I never used.

Update: I finally got an account set up for this website so you can follow it on Bluesky if you would like. A reminder of the Mastodon account too, which will probably work on Threads whenever it federates.