• Bluesky has reached 13 million users a year after leaving its invite-only model.
• The social media platform says it will use a $15 million investment to add more highly requested features.
• This includes a new subscription tier, monetisation to tip your favourite creators and more.

As what is seemingly shaping up to be another major competitor for Twitter/X in Bluesky reaches 13 million plus users, the social media platform is now planning to introduce a subscription tier to unlock premium features and even monetisation tech for users to tip their favourite creators.

Bluesky made the announcement it was planning these additions in a blog post, celebrating reaching more than 13 million more users. The social media platform only had about a million users when it left its invite-only model last year.

It says it recently received a $15 million investment from Blockchain Capital and other venture firms and it plans to turn this new money into more highly requested features. It recently launched the ability to make video uploads and direct messaging.

It says that while Bluesky will always be free to use, it is working on a subscription model that looks to be mostly for cosmetic changes and high-quality video uploads. Currently, users can only upload 25 videos per day but this restriction may not apply for subscribers in the future.

“We will begin developing a subscription model for features like higher quality video uploads or profile customizations like colours and avatar frames,” it explains.

It adds, “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.”

This is a direct jab at X, where users who pay for Premium subscriptions have their posts more favoured by the algorithm and are fed to more users than posts from accounts that are not subscribed.

Bluesky has significantly gained by negatively-perceived changes at X, and the actions of its owner, Elon Musk. In September, 2.6 million users jumped from X to Bluesky after Musk’s battle with a Brazilian court got his app banned in the country.

In October, Musk introduced a new way the block function works on X, where blocked users can now see posts from accounts that have blocked them. Immediately 1.2 million users began searching for Bluesky, including thousands from Japan, famously a premier market for the former Twitter.

Bluesky announced it had 12 million user accounts on 21st October, which quickly spiked to 13 million in just eight days.

The company is also planning to introduce monetisation features to the social media platform so that users can send money to their favourite creators, like Patreon or Twitch.

“Part of our plan includes building payment services for people to support their favorite creators and projects. We’ll share more information as this develops,” it says.

Additionally, the platform is looking ahead to creators using the Bluesky AT Protocol, what it calls its “open technology” to make their own apps.

“We’re excited that developers have already begun building their own applications with totally different purposes from the Bluesky app,” adds the company.

“For example, Smoke Signal is an events app, Frontpage is a web forum, and Bluecast is an audio app (that includes karaoke with licensed songs)! We hypothesize that monetization strategies like subscriptions, domain-name registrations, and payments to creators will enable these independent apps to grow as well.”

All Bluesky seemingly has to do is continue positioning itself as a credible alternative to X, and users will seemingly sign up in their thousands. Perhaps in a more sustainable way than what Threads managed to do.