I understand why Bluesky doesn't let anyone create an account just yet, but why don't they make posts publicly visible without needing an account? I think this is important for many news and governmental organizations to take Bluesky more seriously.
But would I be alright with it at it's current size/user make-up? Yeah totally. (but I'm also not paying for it...)
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/05/bluesky-announces-its-8m-s...
The whole concept of federation is that most of the users are on other people's servers, so an ad-based solution isn't as obvious. They can't count on all those eyeballs being monetizable if they're serious about the AT protocol.
Personally, I believe a lot of people are just sick of social media in general. When Reddit started turning to garbage some 3-4 years back, I started looking for alternatives. Found none. Slowly used it less. By the time the recent drama hit, my usage of it was already almost 0, and dropped to 0. Took a peek at the alternatives, judged them to be a waste of time and attention, and that was it. The niche that Reddit filled is dead for me.
Could you quantify that statement?
All the stats I've seen show that Twitter usage is growing.
Happy to be shown different stats, I just hope that you're not causally spreading "trust me bro" facts.
However, even X's revised number of 245 million daily active users would still see X lose millions or around 3.7 percent of daily active users from before Musk's acquisition.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/10/twitter-t...
Matthew Prince posted a graph from Cloudflare’s ranking of the most popular websites in the world showing Twitter has been in decline since the start of 2023, not long after Elon Musk took over the platform.
So according to their own (suspect) numbers they have a slight decline, according to outsiders they have a heavy decline.
What numbers are you looking at?
Locking read-only viewing to a login wall is something Instagram can get away with due to their network effects, but I don't see Bluesky benefiting from it for that much longer.
If they can build a small but healthy community first before opening it up, then maybe it will avoid some of the toxicity that other platforms have. People want to be in exclusive clubs, and maybe they will value their membership more this way, leading to more demand from those who are not yet invited.
Keeps the PR impact from trolls lower until they have figured out scale of moderation required. As soon as the service is general-public available, it will get used by CSAM spreaders, Nazis and all other kinds of people you don't want to have on your platform for PR and legal reasons.