The IT Nerd

Perhaps the volume of people fleeing Twitter is responsibly for Bluesky being down at the moment. I say that because nothing loads when I try to access the site via the web or via their app on my iPhone. Downdetector confirms this as well:

Not to mention a growing thread on Reddit which indicates that this outage started about an hour ago. While this could be a good problem to have as it likely illustrates how many people want nothing to do with the dumpster fire that is Twitter at the moment, it won’t be a good problem to have the longer this goes on. So I hope the admins are on this and can get the site back up as quickly as possible in order to continue to be a safe haven from Elon Musk’s Twitter.

UPDATE: The site seems to be operational again as of a few minutes ago.

UPDATE #2: According to Paul Frazee who is a developer at Bluesky, this was the reason for the outage:

The last time I spoke about Bluesky, they added 700,000 users just after the US Election. And they had jumped to #5 on the Apple App Store charts. Fast forward to today and this is where Bluesky sits:

That’s stunning. And It suggests that Bluesky has some serious momentum here. And this is at the expense of Twitter. Which by the way in case you were wondering is sitting here on the App Store charts:

That’s one place lower than the last time I checked. If this doesn’t concern Elon, it should. But he’s not exactly a rational person these days. But it does highlight the fact that people are done with Twitter, and it seems that Bluesky has become that alternative to Twitter that people want. Whether it can capitalize on this remains to be seen.

Elon Musk, you have a problem. Bluesky has been emerging as a challenger to the dumpster fire known as Twitter. For example, millions of people signed up when Elon pissed off Brazil. And I do mean millions. But what will freak out Elon is this:

At this pace, Bluesky will be a serious challenger to Twitter from those who are looking for an alternative to the dumpster fire that is Twitter. And if advertisers start to show up on the platform, Elon will need to change his underwear. I’m calling it now.

I am starting to think that we’re at a tipping point where Elon Musk’s antics have finally driven people to go someplace else other than Twitter for their social media fix. I say that because Tech Crunch is reporting the following:

Social networking startup Bluesky continues to benefit from X’s shutdown in Brazil, having now added more than 2 million new users over the past four days, up from just half a million as of Friday. This rapid growth led some users to encounter the occasional error that would state there were “Not Enough Resources” to handle requests, as Bluesky engineers scrambled to keep the servers stable under the influx of new sign-ups.

As new users downloaded the app, Bluesky jumped to becoming the No. 1 app in Brazil over the weekend, ahead of Meta’s X competitor, Instagram Threads. According to app intelligence firm Appfigures, Bluesky’s total downloads soared by 10,584% this weekend compared to last, and its downloads in Brazil were up by a whopping 1,018,952%. The growth seems to be having a halo effect, as downloads outside Brazil also rose by 584%, the firm noted. In part, this is due to Bluesky receiving downloads in 22 countries where it had barely seen any traction before.

In terms of absolute downloads, countries that saw the most installs outside Brazil included the U.S., Portugal, the U.K., Canada and Spain. Those with the most download growth, however, were Portugal, Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Romania. Most of the latter group jumped from single-digit growth to growth in the thousands.

Bluesky’s newcomers have actively engaged on the platform, too, driving up other key metrics.

Now these are figures that are maybe a week old. But this post from Bluesky from two days ago seems to validate that this is not just a temporary blip:

If you’re Elon Musk, that has to freak you out. I am pretty sure that he was hoping that Brazilians would somehow use other means to continue to use Twitter even though it was banned in the country. But that appears not to be the case. On top of that, it also appears that people outside of Brazil are giving Bluesky a try. None of this is good news for Elon. And what’s likely going to worse news is that advertisers who aren’t spending their advertising budgets on Twitter, are likely going to look to spend their dollars, Pounds, or Euros on Bluesky. Which is even worse news for Elon.

On a personal note, I have noted that I am getting more engagement from Bluesky in the form of people reading my posts which I cross post onto the platform, as well as an uptick of people following my Bluesky account (which is @theitnerd.bsky.social if you’re not already a follower). Thus adding another data point to the observation that this isn’t some sort of temporary blip.

I suspect that Elon may be reconsidering some of his life choices right now as this isn’t going in the right direction for him.

A few weeks ago, you might have seen a post from me that mentioned that I had signed up for fledgling social network Bluesky via an invite code provided by a friend. So far I haven’t done anything with that account, which by the way is @theitnerd.bsky.social if you want to give me a follow. But I plan on it when I figure out how to cross post to Bluesky. Having said that, if you want to give Bluesky a shot, now you can without an invite code according to this blog post:

Bluesky is building an open social network where anyone can contribute, while still providing an easy-to-use experience for users. For the past year, we used invite codes to help us manage growth while we built features like moderation tooling, custom feeds, and more. Now, we’re ready for anyone to join.

This will be interesting to see what happens and what sort of traction that this will give this social network. If it does gain traction at a rapid rate, it may get the attention of Elon Musk and cause him to do something irrational and ill advised in retaliation.

I’ll go get the popcorn ready.

Since Twitter became a “hellscape” under Elon Musk’s leadership, I’ve largely moved my cross posting activities from Twitter to Mastodon. And if I look at my numbers since I did this, my engagement numbers haven’t changed. That indicates to me that I don’t need Twitter to be successful as a tech blogger.

So that leads to this question. Why take a look Bluesky if Mastodon is working for me? To answer this, let me explain what Bluesky is.

Bluesky, also known as Bluesky Social is a microblogging site that is an alternative to Twitter. Currently it’s an invitation only platform. But there’s plans to open it to the public. It’s had a rocky start with site outages, a strained relationship with Black users, and the fact that it kind of feels like Twitter. But it shows some degree of promise. And that promise encouraged me to give this a shot when a friend reached out with an invite code for me.

At present, I have created a Bluesky account which is @theitnerd.bsky.social. Right now I don’t have anything posted on it.But the plan is to link my blog to it to do the sort of cross posting that I do on Mastodon. Then I will be able to see what value that Bluesky does or doesn’t add to what I do. This I think will be interesting once I get everything up and running.

This should be interesting…. Watch this space.