Twitter users expressed extreme frustration on Saturday after the owner of the site, Elon Musk, announced a change that only allows most users to view 600 tweets per day. And while many users have jumped ship to sites like Bluesky, it seems that site is now experiencing its own problems. In fact, the invitation-only site has paused new sign-ups because so many people are fleeing Twitter for Bluesky.
“We will temporarily be pausing Bluesky sign-ups while our team continues to resolve the existing performance issues,” the official Bluesky account wrote at 5:15 p.m. ET.
“We’ll keep you updated when invite codes will resume functionality. We’re excited to welcome more users to our beta soon!” the account continued.
Bluesky launched in February as a social media alternative from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. And Bluesky is remarkably similar to Twitter in just about every way. The only downsides are that Bluesky is currently invite-only and doesn’t yet allow for video uploads. Bluesky also doesn’t have direct messages, though some people who are often harassed on social media platforms may see that as a positive feature.
But Twitter power users need an alternative and other competitors don’t really fit the bill. Facebook isn’t great for breaking news, Instagram is focused on images over text, TikTok is all about video and the other text-based alternatives are largely run by extreme partisans. Truth Social, for instance, was started by former president Donald Trump.
Bluesky seemed to be a practical alternative for most people, though it’s unclear when it might become open to everybody. And if Bluesky can figure out how to handle the influx of new users, it has a great start at becoming a serious competitor to Twitter, especially since Musk has broken so many things about the social media site.
Musk insists that the new limits on reading tweets are temporary and a result of what he calls “extreme levels of data scraping” and “system manipulation.” But there are plenty of other theories about what’s going on.
Twitter used Google’s cloud-based services and reportedly just stopped paying its bills recently. Tech news site Platformer reported on June 10 that there was a “mad rush” to move many of Twitter’s data away from Google. Twitter’s contract with Google reportedly expired on June 30, which was yesterday.
Musk vacated the CEO position at Twitter and hired Linda Yaccarino in early June, who was brought on for her extensive experience in ad sales at NBC Universal. But there’s always been a lingering question about how much control Musk would actually hand over, given his reputation for being an extremely hands-on boss. Many major advertisers paused spending on Twitter after Musk took over the platform, with some big brands even expressing concern about being seen next to Musk at a major marketing conference in April.
Musk continues to insist Twitter is close to being profitable, though it’s not clear if that’s because he’s stopped paying many of the social media company’s bills. In fact, Twitter has stopped paying some of its landlords and was recently evicted from an office space in Boulder, Colorado. Twitter, for its part, filed a counter-suit this past week.
It appears that Twitter users are able to use Tweetdeck to at least expand the number of tweets viewable on a given day. But if you like using Twitter for more than, say, half an hour in a day, you’re going to be out of luck. This really does seem like an opportunity for Twitter competitors like Bluesky, if they can get their act together.
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