In May, we wondered aloud if Bluesky might eventually be the social media platform to replace Twitter when it comes to the way the sports community interacts, shares news, and watches games.
On Friday, that process appeared to start officially getting underway.
Bluesky, which was initially spun off of Twitter by former CEO Jack Dorsey, has been in beta as it slowly grew its userbase via an invite-only system. Unlike Mastodon, which has developed a reputation for being overly focused on its open-source nature, and Post, which briefly seemed relevant, Bluesky gained steam deliberately as some of Twitter’s power users and creative thinkers seemed to see that as the best alternative. It also didn’t hurt that Bluesky closely resembles Twitter and works in generally the same way (instead of tweets, they have skeets, which is unfortunate but, then again, so is social media in general).
The dribble turned into a dam-breaking this past Friday, however, after Elon Musk announced that Twitter would temporarily restrict how many tweets users could see in a day. Coupled with the growing list of platform outages and glitches, the situation seemed to be a bridge too far for many Twitter users who seemed happy to go down with the ship as it slowly turned into whatever it is Musk wants it to be.
While previous site issues didn’t seem to cause much of a defection, there was an extremely noticeable bump in Bluesky additions on Friday and over the weekend. It wasn’t just notable people in the world of sports media (Mike Golic Jr, Nicole Auerbach, Zach Lowe, for example) but several publications and outlets also appeared to make the Bluesky jump as well, including The Athletic and SB Nation (FWIW, Awful Announcing joined three weeks ago).
Bluesky even had to briefly pause sign-ups during the weekend as all of the new arrivals were crushing the servers with “record-high traffic,” though they have since enabled sign-ups again.
Meanwhile, Twitterfeeds are littered with people sharing their Bluesky usernames and screenshots from the app as invite codes have suddenly become golden tickets to what some feel is becoming a kind of Grey Havens for longtime Twitter users who have had enough of Elon’s machinations.
It’s still very early days for Bluesky. They’re still in beta. Users are still adjusting to how things work over there. There still isn’t a robust sports “feed” that allows sports fans to congregate in one space together. And for all we know, another social media platform could come along any day now and blow it out of the water.
But if one thing was made clear last week, it was that Sports Twitter saw the writing on the wall and decided this was officially the time to start looking for a new home. While Elon’s restrictions may be lifted, the damage was done as the sports world realized how much they would impact the experience of live-tweeting. And given that very few of them have any interest in paying for whatever it is Twitter is becoming, it was always just a matter of when.
It’s always been a question of where Twitter’s tastemakers will eventually take their talents. While Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok all have their benefits, it seems as though most people in the sports media world have been waiting for the right Twitter clone to come along. We’re not crowning Bluesky yet but this past weekend certainly showed that they’ve moved into the driver’s seat. However, Instagram’s Twitter alternative “Threads” launches in a few days, so we’ll find out pretty quickly which way the wind blows.
Of course, we won’t know it’s over for Twitter until Adrian Wojnarowski, Adam Schefter, Shams Charania, and Ian Rapoport show up over on Bluesky.
As Woj goes, so goes the sports nation.