Bluesky is testing ‘live’ features to take on X

Jan 28, 2026 08:37 PM - 4 months ago 116117

Jess Weatherbed

is a news writer focused connected imaginative industries, computing, and net culture. Jess started her profession astatine TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.

Bluesky says it’s readying to make the app consciousness much “live” this twelvemonth arsenic portion of ongoing efforts to build a competent rival to Elon Musk’s X platform. Announcing Bluesky’s 2026 improvement roadmap, merchandise caput Alex Benzer said the level is moving to make feeds much interactive and timely during unrecorded events, alongside teasing improvements to posting and travel suggestions.

“We’re exploring caller features and interactions wrong feeds that make them consciousness little for illustration conscionable scrolling done posts and much for illustration hanging out,” said Benzer. “We’re besides moving connected making the app consciousness much ‘live’ successful general. We’re taking an experimental approach, truthful I don’t want to over-promise connected specifics, but expect to spot america proceed exploring real-time and event-focused features this year.”

The announcement besides highlights improvements to basal features that request to beryllium made, specified arsenic adding support for drafts, longer videos, faster video uploads, and amended suggestions for “who to follow.” Bluesky doesn’t explicitly opportunity it’ll reside these issues this year, but the accusation is there, acknowledging that “the basics request to beryllium solid” to guarantee users instrumentality pinch the platform. A dedicated squad is besides being put together to negociate Bluesky’s Discover feed, and taxable tags are being explored to make it easier for users to find applicable posts and interests.

With astir 1.5 cardinal regular progressive users, Bluesky has a agelong measurement to spell earlier it catches up to recent estimates for Threads (150 cardinal regular users) and X (more than 270 million). Focusing connected building for “live moments” is Bluesky’s latest push to position itself arsenic a refuge for X users who miss what Twitter utilized to beryllium earlier its controversial transformation nether Musk’s ownership.

“We request much sense-making these days. We miss having nosy connected the internet,” said Benzer. “Bluesky is 1 of vanishingly fewer nationalist networks wherever you tin do some without emotion trapped successful an extractive propaganda instrumentality owned by a billionaire.”

Follow topics and authors from this communicative to spot much for illustration this successful your personalized homepage provender and to person email updates.

More