Bluesky wants to introduce a paid subscription with exclusive features

4 weeks ago 11

The Bluesky microblogging platform has grown significantly over the last year, from 2 million users last November to more than 13 million users. But Bluesky seems to have more ambitious plans for the future, as its chief operating officer Rose Wang has confirmed that the platform will soon have a paid subscription.

Bluesky working on new paid subscription

Following Wang’s announcement on Thursday, the Bluesky team shared a press release announcing that a new paid tier is under development. The idea is to offer a subscription that unlocks exclusive features for paid users, very similar to X Premium (formerly Twitter Blue).

At first, Bluesky will offer the option of uploading videos in higher quality, as well as profile customizations such as avatar colors and frames. More exclusive features should be added in the future for paid subscribers, although Bluesky makes it clear that the platform “will always be free to use.”

“We believe that information and conversation should be easily accessible, not locked down. We won’t uprank accounts simply because they’re subscribing to a paid tier,” Bluesky said in a blog post.

Bluesky emerged in 2021 as a “proof of concept” for the decentralized AT Protocol. In 2019, Twitter’s then CEO Jack Dorsey announced that the company would fund the initiative that would result in Bluesky. The platform no longer has a relationship with X and they ended up becoming competitors after Elon Musk bought Twitter.

Bluesky was launched as a private beta and remained so for over a year. It has been gaining traction among users who don’t like Elon Musk’s X or Meta’s Threads. Interestingly, a recent episode in Brazil that resulted in the temporary banning of X led hundreds of thousands of Brazilians to try Bluesky.

Would you consider paying for a Bluesky subscription? Let us know in the comments section below.