Social network Bluesky has published its roadmap for the year ahead, highlighting a focus on improving the app’s algorithmic Discover feed, giving users better recommendations on who to follow, and making the app more real-time.
At the same time, the company acknowledged that it needs to work on getting the “basics” right.
The decentralized X and Threads alternative became publicly available in early 2024 after an invite-only period and has since scaled to more than 42 million users, according to data pulled directly from the Bluesky API for developers.
Bluesky differentiates itself from mainstream social media with custom feeds and configurable algorithms, but it hasn’t kept up with its rivals when it comes to basic features like private accounts, drafts, and long-form video support.
Alex Benzer, Bluesky’s head of product, acknowledged some of those concerns in a new post on the company’s website, saying that “the fundamentals need to be solid” if Bluesky expects users to stick around.
The comments come in the wake of BlueSky’s slump in usage, with daily active users down 40% year-over-year as of October 2025, according to data from market intelligence provider SimilarWeb, as reported by Forbes.
In addition to support for drafts, Benzer said the app’s composer needs to handle media better, noting that three-minute videos aren’t enough and videos need to be uploaded faster. Additionally, he wants Bluesky to be able to post more than four photos at once, and thinks it should be easier to create threads.
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There was no mention of the need for private accounts, which Bluesky previously explained would take more time to materialize. The plan is for the underlying protocol, AT Protocol (AT Protocol for short), to eventually support private accounts. But that won’t happen anytime soon.
Benzer also pointed to improvements to the app’s Discover feed, which now lets users add topic tags as a way to direct users to posts related to their interests. Finding high-quality connections improves the overall user experience, which also improves Who to Follow suggestions.
Benzer believes Bluesky needs a more “real-time” feel, whether it’s events like sports or important political moments like elections. The company is building curation tools for teams to make high-quality, timely, custom feeds available during live events, he said. The team is considering other new features within the feeds that would make these feeds “more like wandering around than just scrolling through posts,” Benzer said. (I don’t know exactly what that means.)
In terms of growing the overall ecosystem, which the community refers to as the “Atmosphere,” the company will strive to improve interoperability with other apps that are also built on the underlying AT protocol.
For example, if you go live on Twitch or Streamplace, another app that uses the AT protocol, you’ll see a LIVE badge on your Bluesky profile picture.
Benzer said such integration is expected to happen “soon.”
Although Bluesky has been successful in adding users, actual usage on Bluesky waxes and wanes, often spiking in response to changes in X or moments of political tension. Meta’s Threads, on the other hand, is X’s next closest competitor. New third-party data shows that Threads beats X in daily mobile user numbers, but X still beats X on the desktop web.
The main advantage of Threads is that it is backed by the resources of leading technology companies, allowing for massive cross-promotion, easy onboarding, and a large amount of resources. As a result, Threads has rapidly released new features over the past year or so, including interest-based communities, better filters, DMs, long texts, and disappearing posts. This differentiates it from X and helps it gain traction among users, including those who want a network that champions creator content over politics, something Threads was prioritizing a year ago.
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