A new home for the birds who tweet

Has the ‘Twitter killer’ finally arrived? Judging by the hype that Bluesky’s been getting this past weekend, it’s quite possible.

Bluesky was co-founded by Twitter’s ex-CEO, Jack Dorsey, and incubated within the tech giant before spinning off into its own company earlier this year.

The text-only social media app, which is still in an invite-only beta, has about 55,000 current users. But a lot more people want in. More than 1.2 million people are currently on its waitlist, and, as of yesterday, Bluesky was the App Store’s No. 10 most downloaded social app in the US.

📸 Big picture: Bluesky is a decentralized platform, which is a tech jargon-y way of saying that anyone can create their own "server" and moderate content as they see fit.

If its goal is to catch up to Twitter, though, Bluesky’s got a long way to go. Not only does Twitter boast 228 million monthly active users as of last year, the term “tweet” is integrated into our cultural lexicon.

Bluesky is showing promise in the catchy words department, though. On Monday, CNN’s Jake Tapper mentioned Bluesky on the air, referring to the platform’s posts as "skeets," a portmanteau of “sky” + “tweets.” (Bluesky’s 8-10 person team has asked people to not use the term, though that seems to only be fanning the skeet flames.)