• by Colin Kirkland , May 8, 2024

As Bluesky continues to add users, the decentralized microblogging platform is making some “quality of life” updates, including direct messaging, video support, enhanced custom feeds and expanded moderation controls.

Bluesky is attempting to position itself as a direct X competitor while laying the groundwork to a decentralized social media experience that runs off its own federated protocol. The platform went public in February and has since begun allowing its 5.6 million users to run their own servers, create custom algorithms, implement their own moderation rules and develop their own apps.

“This has laid the foundation for a social protocol that can exist long after Bluesky the app does,” the company wrote in a blog post.

In order to attract more users and compete with X, Mastodon and Threads, Bluesky needs to build out the platform’s capabilities. It is currently developing a direct messaging (DM) service that will be integrated into the Bluesky app but will exist off-protocol until the company later develops an on-protocol DM.

The initial version will focus on one-on-one communication and will “feel familiar” to DMs on other social networks, according to the company.

Bluesky says it is also working on custom feed updates, including in-app feed creation, the ability to submit posts to feeds, curate the submissions, and manually moderate what'sincluded, as well as better feed discovery, a new trending feeds view, “show more” and “show less” buttons, and feed “following” to show what's happening in a user's various communities.

“What you see on social media is mostly determined by algorithms, and giving you the power to control your algorithms like this is one of the most important things we do,” the company says, highlighting one way in which it has decided to separate itself from traditional social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X.

The platform is also developing new ways to improve its community-driven moderation tools. Building on reply controls for threads, user lists, and labeling, Bluesky says it will focus on “anti-harassment mechanisms” over the next few months, but didn’t elaborate further.

In addition, Bluesky is developing support for videos –– specifically 90-second clips users can share on their posts –– and an “OAuth” login mechanism, which would allow users to “Log in with Bluesky,” just like they can “Log in with Facebook” or “Log in with Google.”

The company says this will make signing in easier and safer for its users, especially third-party clients. Eventually, it says app-specific passwords will no longer be required.

These announcements come days after the company’s biggest backer and Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, left the Bluesky board for unknown reasons. Dorsey was largely responsible for co-funding and popularizing the app after Elon Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it to X. 

Bluesky is currently seeking a new board member who shares their “commitment to building a social network that puts people in control of their experience.”