Bluesky, a social network championed by Jack Dorsey, opens for anyone to sign up

Bluesky, a Twitter-like social network championed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has emerged from its cocoon and is now allowing anyone to create an account and join the service.

Until Tuesday, anyone hoping to join Bluesky needed an invitation, which typically meant hunting down an existing member and begging for an invite. That invite-only period gave the site time to build out moderation tools and other features, Bluesky said.

Bluesky resembles Twitter – now known as X after Tesla billionaire Elon Musk paid US$44 billion for the company – in many respects, although it does not yet offer direct messaging between users. It does offer more customisation options, though whether these will appeal to users is not yet clear.

By default, Bluesky displays posts by accounts you follow in a linear timeline, although it is also possible to switch to algorithm-driven timelines created by other users. The service does its own moderation but also plans to let its users stack together alternative moderation schemes. That feature has not been enabled yet.

And once things really get going, Bluesky plans to set users free by allowing them to move their collections of friends, followers and other data to competing social networks. As the company says in a whimsical cartoon page included in Tuesday’s announcement, Bluesky aims to be “the last social account you’ll ever need to create”.