How Bluesky, Twitter’s one-time side project, is challenging Elon Musk’s X

Published

6 months ago

January 22, 2025

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Billionaire Mark Cuban, New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and author Stephen King are all now on Bluesky. The social media platform is the brainchild of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who conceived Bluesky as a side project inside Twitter in 2019. Bluesky, which is no longer affiliated with Dorsey, is now its own company, and following the U.S. election, the platform saw an influx of new users, most of who were looking to flee X. Bluesky now has over 28 million users, according to the company.

“The growth numbers for Bluesky are wild, and I think it’s really because there’s this vacuum being left by old Twitter,” says Meghana Dhar, a strategic advisor and former head of partnerships at Instagram and Snap Inc. “When Elon Musk took over Twitter and it kind of became X, things changed a lot, right? Content moderation changed. He changed the pricing options. So as he kind of navigated that transition, he lost a lot of people.”

“This is a platform that now seems to cater more pointedly toward right leaning or conservative users,” said Salvador Rodriguez, deputy tech editor at CNBC. “For folks who maybe don’t want to be presented with that kind of content so in their face, Bluesky is an area that, for all intents and purposes, the mechanisms are the same, but the vibe is completely different.”

Bluesky looks and feels a lot like old Twitter. Users can write short posts and include a photo or short video. They can also interact with others’ posts by commenting, liking or reposting. Users’ feeds consist of people they follow, as well as any other feeds they decide to subscribe to. But unlike conventional social media platforms, Bluesky is designed to be decentralized and give users a greater degree of control over their data and what content they do or don’t see.

“We don’t control what you see on Bluesky … There’s no single algorithm showing you things. You can browse a marketplace of algorithms built by other people. You can build your own algorithm if you want to see just cats or just art, you can do that,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber said in an interview with CNBC in November. Bluesky also allows users to export out any of their posts, likes and followers to other platforms should they choose to leave Bluesky. Graber has said this makes the platform “billionaire-proof.“

Bluesky currently does not host ads, which is the business model of most social media platforms, but its leadership has not ruled that out as possibility in the future.

“I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do for monetization. We’re not going to build an algorithm that just shoves ads at you and locking users in,” Graber said. “That’s not our model. And so what we are going to do is give users better experiences, add new features, and then we’re doing a subscription model as well as services in the developer ecosystem. Because this isn’t just for users, this is for people who want to come build.”

But building a social media platform is no easy feat. Like many platforms before it, Bluesky has struggled with an increase of impersonator accounts and scammers as it’s grown. Bluesky recently said that users submitted 6.48 million reports to its moderation service in 2024, compared to 358,000 reports submitted in 2023. Watch the video to find out more about Bluesky’s impressive growth and the challenges facing the company in an increasingly fragmented social media market.

Technology

Astronomer CEO Andy Byron resigns after viral Coldplay kiss-cam controversy

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6 hours ago

July 19, 2025

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Astronomer CEO Andy Byron resigns after viral Coldplay kiss-cam controversy

Chris Martin of Coldplay performs at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire on October 12, 2021 in London, England.

Simone Joyner | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Astronomer, the technology company that faced backlash after its CEO was allegedly caught in an affair at a Coldplay concert, said the CEO has resigned, the company announced Saturday.

“Andy Byron has tendered his resignation, and the Board of Directors has accepted,” the company said in a statement. “The Board will begin a search for our next Chief Executive as Cofounder and Chief Product Officer Pete DeJoy continues to serve as interim CEO.”

Byron was shown on a big screen at a Coldplay concert on Wednesday with his arms around the company’s chief people officer, Kristin Cabot. Byron, who is married with children, immediately hid when the couple was shown on screen. Lead singer Chris Martin said, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.” A concert attendee’s video of the affair went viral.

In May, Astronomer announced a $93 million investment round led by Bain Ventures and other investors, including Salesforce Ventures.

Byron’s resignation comes after Astronomer said Friday that it had launched a “formal investigation” into the matter, and the CEO was placed on administrative leave.

“Before this week, we were known as a pioneer in the DataOps space, helping data teams power everything from modern analytics to production AI,” the company said in its Saturday statement. “Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met.”

Technology

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sells an additional $12.94 million worth of shares

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8 hours ago

July 19, 2025

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sells an additional .94 million worth of shares

Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia Corp., speaks during a news conference in Taipei on May 21, 2025.

I-hwa Cheng | Afp | Getty Images

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sold 75,000 shares on Friday, valued at about $12.94 million, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Friday’s sale is part of a plan adopted in March for Huang to sell up to 6 million shares of the leading artificial intelligence company. Earlier this week, Huang sold 225,000 shares of the chipmaker, totaling about $37 million, according to a separate SEC filing. The CEO began trading stock per the plan last month.

Surging demand for AI and the graphics processing units that power large language models has significantly boosted Huang’s net worth and pushed Nvidia’s market capitalization beyond $4 trillion, making it the world’s most valuable company.

Nvidia announced this week that it expects to resume sales of its H20 chips to China soon, following signals from the Trump administration that it would approve export licenses. Earlier this year, U.S. officials had stated that Nvidia would require special permission to ship the chips, which are specifically designed for the Chinese market.

“The U.S. government has assured NVIDIA that licenses will be granted, and NVIDIA hopes to start deliveries soon,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday. Huang said during a news conference on Wednesday in Beijing that he wants to sell chips more advanced than the H20 to China at some point.

Technology

Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish files to go public on NYSE

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1 day ago

July 18, 2025

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Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish files to go public on NYSE

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, holds hundred dollar bills as he speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 Conference at Miami Beach Convention Center on April 7, 2022 in Miami, Florida.

Marco Bello | Getty Images

The Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital asset firm to head for the public market.

The company, led by CEO Tom Farley, a veteran of the finance industry and former president of the New York Stock Exchange, said it plans to trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “BLSH.”

A spinout of Block.one, Bullish started with an initial investment from backers including Thiel’s Founders Fund and Thiel Capital, along with Nomura, Mike Novogratz and others. Bullish acquired crypto news site CoinDesk in 2023.

“In the first quarter of 2025, Bullish exchange executed over $2.5 billion in average daily volume, ranking in the top five exchanges by spot volume for Bitcoin and Ether,” the company said on its website. The prospectus listed top competitors as Binance, Coinbase and Kraken.

The IPO filing says that as of March 31, the total trading volume since launch has exceeded $1.25 trillion.

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The filing is another significant step for the cryptocurrency industry, which has fought for years to convince institutions to embrace digital assets as legitimate investments.

It’s already been a big year on the market for crypto offerings, highlighted by stablecoin issuer Circle, which has jumped more than sevenfold since its IPO in June. Etoro, an online trading platform that includes services for crypto investors, debuted in May.

Novogratz‘s crypto firm Galaxy Digital started trading on the Nasdaq in May, moving its listing from the Toronto Stock Exchange. And in June, Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange and custodian founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, confidentially filed for an IPO in the U.S.

Meanwhile, investors continue to flock to bitcoin. The digital currency is trading at over $117,000, up from about $94,000 at the start of the year.

President Donald Trump, on Friday, signed the GENIUS Act into law — a set of regulations that establish some initial consumer protections around stablecoins, which are tied to assets like the U.S. dollar with the intent of reducing price volatility associated with many cryptocurrencies.

In its filing with the SEC, Bullish says its mission is partly to “drive the adoption of stablecoins, digital assets, and blockchain technology.”

Crypto industry players, including Thiel, Elon Musk, and President Trump’s AI and Crypto czar David Sacks spent heavily to re-elect Trump and have pushed for legislation that legitimizes digital assets and exchanges.

WATCH: Trump’s crypto plan