Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey arrives at the “Tech for Good” Summit in Paris, France May 15, 2019.
Charles Platiau | Reuters
Elon Musk’s Twitter is facing new competition from a rival called Bluesky, a so-called decentralized communications app that is backed by Twitter co-founder and twice-former CEO, Jack Dorsey.
Musk’s Twitter makeover has sparked new interest in decentralized social networks. Unlike Twitter under Musk, or Facebook under CEO and controlling shareholder Mark Zuckerberg, decentralized social media platforms have no single owner or leader and are not beholden to commercial or financial interests.
Advocates say that decentralized projects are less likely to collect and sell users’ data and less susceptible to censorship.
Bluesky has exploded in popularity over the past few months, according to data provided to CNBC by market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, although it still lags far behind Twitter in total download volume.
The social messaging app had 628,000 mobile downloads in April, representing a 606% rise from March when it became available on Android in addition to iOS. Meanwhile, Twitter had 14.9 million app downloads in April, which is a 2% increase from the 14.6 million downloads it accumulated in March.
The number of Twitter mobile app downloads actually declined 18% in February to 14.05 million from 17.2 million in January. Bluesky officially debuted on iOS in February, generating 11,000 downloads in that month.
Bluesky appears to be gaining more attention than decentralized messaging app Mastodon, which attracted a lot of interest in November as a possible alternative to Twitter. In April, for instance, Mastodon only had 90,000 downloads, the Sensor Tower data showed.
Why decentralization?
Since Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last year, he has fundamentally changed what Jack Dorsey’s company built, adding new subscription-only features, allowing controversial users back on to the platform, and making deep staffing cuts.
The social media app has…
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