HOW Blues/cy, alternative to X cmd Facebook, is handling explosive growth

In February2023, a half-dozen techies introduced a social network prototype in an invitation-only launch. They deliberately debuted their creation, Bluesky, with little fanfare so that they could closely manage its growth.

- MIKE ISAAC

But lately, it has been anything but slow and steady.

Over the past week, Blueskys growth has exploded, more than doubling to 15 million-plus users as people seek alternatives to X, Facebook and Threads. It has rocketed to the top of Apple's and Google's app stores as the most downloaded free app. Its ascent has been so rapid that the company has been forced to grow up practically overnight.

Blueskyis 20 full-time employees have been working around the clock to deal with the issues that come with hypergrowth: site outages, glitches in the code and content moderation issues. Most importantly, they have been trying to keep early users happy as new members have flooded in.