Bluesky, a decentralized social media app alternative to X (formerly Twitter), has announced that it has now crossed 2 million users — doing so just two months after crossing 1 million users. The company is also finally about to add a public web interface, which might help make it a more attractive destination for journalists and other users.
One big hurdle for Bluesky to reach a bigger audience is that people can’t view links to posts without being signed in, so the upcoming public web interface should finally help alleviate that problem. The public interface is slated for launch “around the end of this month,” according to the company’s blog post.
Bluesky will also open the floodgates for federation early next year. Bluesky is technically decentralized, since it’s built on top of the AT Protocol, but users who sign up for Bluesky (which is still invite-only) still must sign up via the company’s main bsky.social network. A federated network would allow users to post through various providers instead of a large central platform like most big social media companies. Right now, Mastodon is the most prominent decentralized Twitter-like platform that already openly supports multiple providers and has attracted a lot of journalists and professionals.
Bluesky has also highlighted how it had recently added features like mobile push notifications, email verification for your account, and accessibility improvements like improvements to alt text.
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