What's Next at Bluesky

As we head into 2026, we're entering a new phase for the Bluesky app. Last year was about scaling through rapid growth and getting the fundamentals in place. This year is about leaning into what's working and investing more intentionally in the things that make Bluesky different.

Building for live moments

Bluesky lights up when things happen in the world.

People come here to experience events together — to discuss, make sense and laugh about things. We need more sense-making these days. We miss having fun on the internet. Bluesky is one of vanishingly few public networks where you can do both without feeling trapped in an extractive propaganda machine owned by a billionaire.

We've heard people calling Bluesky the official app for sports. When the World Series went to Game 7, you could see why — everyone showed up. On election nights, like New York's recent mayoral race, it becomes a newsroom. When something big happens, people come here to talk about it.

For most of last year, our job during these moments was to just keep the lights on. Now, as the app becomes more stable and we continue growing the team, we're intentionally building for these moments. Bluesky is the best place to talk about what's happening in the world — live, together, in ways that closed platforms can't easily replicate.

We have a real advantage here. Closed platforms are structurally limited in how they can respond to live moments. They have one algorithm, one team making decisions, one set of product surfaces, one content policy. An open protocol doesn't have those limits. Anyone can spin up a feed for a live event. Anyone can build tools or apps that plug into the moment.

The best experiences can emerge from the community, not just from Bluesky alone. The Atmosphere, which is what we call the ecosystem of apps built on the same open protocol as Bluesky, is fertile ground for that to happen because it's unbiased and requires no permission to build.

Custom feeds are already one of our most differentiated features. They power our trending topics system, and community-built feeds have become destinations for everything from science discussion to sports. But we've barely scratched the surface of what's possible there.

This year, we're making feeds more central to the app. They'll get first-class treatment. We're building curation tools for our team to surface high-quality, timely feeds during live events. We're exploring new features and interactions within feeds that make them feel less like just scrolling through posts and more like hanging out.

We're also working on making the app feel more "live" in general. We're taking an experimental approach, so I don't want to over-promise on specifics, but expect to see us continue exploring real-time and event-focused features this year.

Strengthening the foundation

People just want a place with good vibes to hang out and post online. Millions already use Bluesky, but there are far more out there who haven't joined yet, or tried it early on and didn't stick around. For most of them, the basics need to be solid before they'll stay. That means making it easier to post, easier to find great people to follow, and easier to discover content worth coming back for.

On posting: Basic features like drafts are still missing. The composer should handle media better — three-minute videos aren't enough, videos should upload faster, four photos aren't enough, threads should be easier to create.

On following: Our "who to follow" suggestions need to improve. These are hard to get right, but they're important. High-quality follows lead to a much better experience. Making great connections between people is the fundamental purpose of the app.

On discovery: The Discover feed has come a long way, but there's more to do. We're building a dedicated team to make it great. We're also exploring topic tags as a way to help people find posts and organize around specific interests. Posters should have an easier time finding the right audience for their posts.

Driving discovery for Atmosphere apps

Recently, we launched a beta feature for live streamers called Live Now. When you're streaming, you can add a "LIVE" badge to your profile photo on Bluesky. When people click it, they're taken directly to your stream on Twitch or Streamplace, another Atmosphere app.

When you stream on Streamplace, your "LIVE" badge is automatically updated on Bluesky without you having to manually change it. That's a great example of how Atmosphere apps can work together in fun ways.

The Atmosphere is the only place on the web where integrations can happen this way. This connects back to our strategy: we're all working together to build a big community of apps that will collectively break through.

This year, we're looking through that lens and asking questions like: How might other Atmosphere apps make posts more expressive on Bluesky? How might they make profiles more meaningful or dynamic? A small tease: we have a profile integration with another Atmosphere app shipping soon that I think folks will be excited about.

If you're building an app, this is part of the opportunity. Build something that meaningfully enhances the Bluesky app experience and it can reach millions of people. We want to inspire app devs by showing what's possible, and we want to bring more visibility to all the cool projects emerging in the Atmosphere.

Join us

In my time in tech, I've mostly been a founder. That's why I was drawn to this role — it's not a traditional product role because we're not building a traditional social app.

Only about half a dozen people at Bluesky are fully dedicated to building app features today. That's a small team for the size of the app and the ambitions we have, and it means the impact of each new person is enormous.

If you're excited by the idea of building a social app that's open by default and designed to grow an entire ecosystem, you should check out our open roles.

People are worn down by the mainstream platforms. They're looking for something that feels more fun and more human. We know that's possible and we're building toward it. If that resonates, we'd love to work with you.