Bluesky has experienced the explosive growth that many of us hoped it would. There’s been a massive desire for a life raft for those mourning the loss of what Twitter was before Elon Musk took over. Perhaps even a little before too. When Musk announced his plans to monetise Twitter, I cringed a lot. Now that the same, and by that I mean monetisation, is happening with Bluesky, I don’t feel so concerned.
Here’s why.
Bluesky’s Early Monetisation Strategy
Before I continue, we need to remember that as much as Bluesky is a life raft, it’s a business. And it does need to make enough money to survive. But the hope is that now we’ve seen how not to run a social media platform, we can learn the best and most cost efficient way to do it.
On the Bluesky GitHub, which is a public view of things in the works for the platform, a mockup has appeared. Now, Bluesky has stated this could be a million miles from any reality if what’s coming, but it could also be a hint for what Bluesky’s monetisation plans are.
One of the most interesting features is a Bluesky+ profile badge. The company has mentioned that it is working on better ways of verifying profile ownership beyond domain verifications.
I highly doubt this is what the final verification process will look like given the more open nature of Bluesky. I’d be shocked if verification was pay to play, but again, we can’t confirm or rule it out from these screen shots.
Another screenshot on GitHub showed potential pricing, again to be taken with a pinch of salt given this was all placeholder possibly only added to confirm designs.
Bluesky software engineer Dan Abramov says “Some of these are likely to make it, but please don’t take this as an actual list of planned features”.
In a post on Bluesky Abramov added that “we need to get better at avoiding setting expectation
Sentiment the Difference
For me, what I find fascinating is how differently I feel towards Bluesky monetising versus how I felt when Twitter/X did. There’s a feeling of backing the future with Bluesky and a feeling that their pricing is fair. The hope is that models like this preseve the ad-free experience.
Here’s hoping that the outcome of Bluesky’s monetisation is sensible and user-friendly.
