Elon Musk's decision to introduce temporary post-viewing restrictions on Twitter led to a surge in traffic for rival social platform Bluesky on Saturday, with the company reporting "record-high traffic". Musk, who holds the positions of executive chairman and CTO at Twitter, imposed this limit due to significant data scraping and system manipulation issues. Different viewing restrictions were enforced for verified, unverified, and newly unverified accounts, leading to an influx of users experiencing a "Rate limit exceeded" error message.
Bluesky, a budding text-based social media network endorsed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, emerged as an alternative for frustrated Twitter users. Although it's still in its invite-only beta phase, the uptick in user traffic has strained the platform's performance. To manage these issues, Bluesky temporarily suspended new sign-ups, but resumed them by late Sunday.
Dorsey, who had originally incubated Bluesky within Twitter in 2019 while he was still CEO, supports the platform that operates on a decentralized network technology called the AT Protocol. Theoretically, this technology could fuel future social apps and allow users to retain their identities across multiple platforms.
Bluesky Public Benefit LLC was established in February 2022 by members of the Bluesky project, with Jay Graber serving as CEO and Dorsey as a founding board member. The company shared on Twitter in April 2022 about its successful $13 million funding round to aid in kickstarting its R&D. According to the company's website, Bluesky's user base had grown to over 50,000 by the end of April this year.
Bluesky isn't the sole contender in the race to rival Twitter. Decentralized messaging app Mastodon garnered attention in November, while social media behemoth Meta has disclosed its plans to develop a decentralized text update sharing network. Anticipation builds around Meta's launch, with The Verge reporting that Meta's competitor to Twitter, known as Threads, was briefly visible in the Google Play store.