Two months after the social network Bluesky launched in February 2023, it got its first bona fide celebrity user: the humorist known as dril. An absurdist Twitter character once described by the New Yorker as “one of America’s incisive ongoing works of social criticism,” dril had a finger on the pulse of Twitter’s decades-old chaotic energy, and that energy was headed to Bluesky.

“it is real it is him,” Bluesky developer Paul Frazee posted after dril joined. Despite his nearly two million followers at the time, Elon Musk’s X was no longer working for him, dril told Forbes. “Their algorithm has been more aggressively prioritizing moronic political commentators and crypto scammers, while pushing aside the people you actually follow,” he said.

“If Bluesky can market itself as a sort of last bastion against ad bots, AI crap, and nefarious algorithms, I think it'll be in a very strong position,” he continued. But “it's likely only a matter of time before one of their higher-up tech gurus decides to break the dam so all that sewage can flow in.”

Bluesky was never meant to be an app — or even a company. It began as an open source research project at Twitter, a skunkworks team helmed by open internet evangelist Jay Graber. Graber’s mandate was to build a protocol, a shared language that computers could use to talk to each other, designed specifically for social media. Through the AT Protocol (or Authentic Transfer, as well as, “where you at online?”), Twitter and other companies would be able to exchange information with one another, creating an open network where posts could be freely shared across social platforms.

But after Elon Musk bought Twitter, it became clear that Bluesky was no longer on its roadmap. Twitter under Musk began to transform, facing an advertiser boycott, exodus of users, and eventually a name change to X. So the team that made the protocol spun up a quick app, just to show how it might be used. They launched it as an invite-only social network in 2023.

Graber began leading Bluesky two years earlier, after Parag Agrawal, who would soon become Twitter CEO, offered her the job. The move proved prophetic for Graber, who had previously worked in cryptocurrency and built social apps. Her mother, who grew up in China, gave her the first name Lantian, Mandarin for blue sky. (The similarity, however, is coincidental, as the project had already been named before Graber’s involvement.)

Since its launch, Bluesky has seen unusual success: It raised a modest $15 million Series........

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