Bluesky Doesn't Need More Apps. It Needs Advanced Video (Part 1)

Let's be honest about where social media stands right now. Twitter collapsed into something unrecognizable. Threads exists because Meta smelled blood in the water. TikTok keeps growing even while governments keep threatening it and still continues to grow after the forced sell to American companies. Instagram keeps finding new ways to matter, and Facebook, the main app, is where engagement goes to retire.

Bluesky walked into that mess holding something rare: genuine goodwill, plus a technical foundation (the AT Protocol) that actually solves problems people claim to care about. Forty-five million registered users. And yet by late 2025, daily active usage had dropped roughly 40% year-over-year. [1] People signed up. And then........People just left. More recent stats from bskycheck.com here:

I have a theory about one big reason why people are not sticking with there app, and it fits in one word: video.

The masses know ONE thing

Here's an uncomfortable truth the open-social crowd keeps dancing around: regular people do not think in protocols. They think in brands. They learn one name, they go to that name, and that name is their network, their homebase.

Want proof of how little the average user thinks about corporate structure or technical architecture? People complain about Meta and Mark Zuckerberg on Instagram and Threads, apps owned by Meta and run by Mark Zuckerberg. To this day, a huge chunk of users don't register that Instagram and Threads are Facebook. The illusion of choice works on people incredibly well.

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Now flip that around and apply it to Bluesky's strategy. The pitch to a mainstream user currently sounds something like: "Join the Bluesky app, this is the "example" app for the protocol. Want a dedicated short video like Tiktok?, download Skylight (don't worry, it's the same protocol, your followers come with you). Livestreaming? That's Streamplace. Photos like instagram? Try Flashes."

Nobody thinks that way. Nobody is going to think that way. Users will learn, recognize, and go to BLUESKY. That word is the network. If the thing they want to do isn't in the app with that name on it, as far as they're concerned, the network can't do it.

The ecosystem is trying, and that's the problem

I want to be fair to the builders here, because some of the ATProto video apps are genuinely impressive. Skylight is the standout: a TikTok-style vertical video app backed by Mark Cuban, built by a two-person team, [6] now sitting at 380,000+ users with over 150,000 videos uploaded. When the TikTok US ownership deal finalized in January, Skylight picked up ~20,000 users in a weekend. [2] The product is real, and so is the demand for an open alternative to TikTok.

But hold that 380,000 next to TikTok's roughly 200 million monthly active users in the US alone. [2] No roadmap closes that gap, because the gap is about recognition. Skylight is fighting for the name recognition that Bluesky already has, and Bluesky isn't using it.

And look at how these apps actually work under the hood. Skylight wanted livestreaming, so it partnered with another ATProto app, Streamplace, rather than building it. [7] Bluesky's answer to live video? A "LIVE" badge on your profile photo that links out to your Twitch or Streamplace stream. [1] Read that again: Bluesky's live video feature is a badge that sends you to a different app. That's not a feature. That's a bibliography.

I know exactly how that line lands with the ATProto faithful, so let me say it before you do: to a protocol purist, that badge is the whole point. The open web working as intended. Small apps doing one thing well while identity flows freely between them, no walled garden anywhere. I'm aware of that view, and I even respect it. As architecture, it's beautiful.

But here's my lived experience, and I'd bet money it's yours too: I have never once watched a regular person tap a badge, get bounced into an app they've never heard of, and think "ah, composability!!" What they actually think is "wait, where did this take me?" and then they close it. I've watched people abandon a checkout because it opened a second browser tab. I've watched people complain about Zuckerberg inside apps Zuckerberg owns without ever noticing. The gap between how builders experience software and how everyone else experiences software is enormous, and the badge lives on the wrong side of it. Elegance in the architecture diagram is friction in someone's hand. The purists are right about what the badge is. Where they lose me is what it feels like to someone who will never read a protocol spec.

The protocol is doing its job; content flows between these apps and identities carry over. But the plumbing was never the problem. The front door is.

What the Bluesky app actually needs

Bluesky was originally built as a proof of concept for what the protocol could do. Fine, proof delivered. But the reference app has become the brand, and the brand now has obligations. If Bluesky wants mainstream users, the main app needs to perform ALL of the core functions people expect from a modern social platform:

1. Real video, natively. Right now uploads are capped at three minutes, they're slow, and even Bluesky's head of product has publicly admitted this isn't good enough. [1] That means longer videos, faster uploads, and a player that doesn't feel like an afterthought. Table stakes.
2. A true short-form vertical feed. Bluesky technically has vertical video custom feeds (launched January 2025), [4] but they're buried behind the custom-feed system, which is exactly the kind of "you have to know it exists" design that mainstream users bounce off. The TikTok-style feed should be a first-class tab instead of a power-user Easter egg.
3. Native livestreaming. This time without the badge. Go live inside Bluesky and let people watch and chat right there. Streamplace can power it under the hood for all I care; the sausage-making should be invisible, and the user should never have to leave the app.
4. Creator monetization. Video without a way to get paid is a half-measure, and creators know it. This is the lesson everyone should have learned from Vine: you can have the most culturally influential short-video app on the planet, and if the people making the content can't make a living, they leave and the app dies. Forget the algorithm; TikTok's real moat is the millions of Americans whose livelihoods run through it. [3] Nobody with a real audience is moving their career to a platform that treats their work as a hobby. A billion-dollar creator fund isn't the ask here. A credible path is: tips, maybe subscriptions, some kind of rev-share pilot. Anything that signals you can build here and get paid here. Shipping video without it and you've built a stage with no box office.

Here's the part that should make this an easy argument inside Bluesky HQ: the protocol makes this cheaper than it would be for anyone else. Skylight's videos and Streamplace's streams are already on the network. A normal startup would have to bootstrap a video library from zero. Bluesky just has to build the surface, because the content is already flowing underneath it. That's the actual superpower of ATProto, and it's being spent on... interoperability badges.

"But the whole point is the ecosystem!"

I can already hear the objection, because it's been made in print: Bluesky's real failure, the argument goes, is how it tells its story. [5] The network is bigger than the app, and Bluesky should say so louder. If you don't like the Bluesky experience, you can hop to Blacksky or Gander or build your own thing, and that flexibility IS the product.

I get it. I even agree it's the right story for developers and the technically curious. But as a mainstream growth strategy, it's exactly backwards. You cannot market your way into making normal people care about architecture. Ten years of "the fediverse is the future" posting has produced a Mastodon that mainstream users still find confusing. Normal people have never been won over by "look how the system works." They get won over by "look what you can do, right here, right now."

The ecosystem story and the everything-app story aren't even in conflict. Let Bluesky-the-app be the flagship that does everything, and let the ecosystem be the escape hatch and the innovation lab. The escape hatch is the insurance policy that makes the flagship trustworthy. But insurance policies don't sell subscriptions. Products do.

The window won't stay open

The timing here is almost unfairly good. TikTok's US ownership just changed hands and users are visibly nervous. Skylight's weekend growth spike proves the demand for an open video alternative is real, right now. [2] Meanwhile Threads is out-shipping everyone on features and starting to pass X in daily mobile users. [1] And the lesson from Threads has less to do with Meta's resources (though those help) than with speed: ship the features normal people expect, in one recognizable app, before they stop caring.

Bluesky's 2026 roadmap makes the right noises: fix the basics, longer videos, faster uploads, more "real-time" energy. [1] Good. But the roadmap still reads like a text app adding video features, when the moment calls for a social app where video is a pillar.

The protocol was the hard part, and it's built. The network-effect seed, 42 million registered accounts, already exists. What's missing is the willingness to let the main app be what the masses already think it is: the whole network, under one name, that does everything.

People will learn one word. Make sure that word can do video.

Sources

[1] TechCrunch — "Bluesky teases 2026 roadmap: A better Discover feed, real-time features, and more" (Jan 27, 2026) https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/27/bluesky-teases-2026-roadmap-a-better-discover-feed-real-time-features-and-more/

[2] TechCrunch — "TikTok alternative Skylight soars to 380K+ users after TikTok US deal finalized" (Jan 26, 2026) https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/26/tiktok-alternative-skylight-soars-to-380k-users-after-tiktok-u-s-deal-finalized/

[3] Fast Company — "What is Skylight? Why this TikTok alternative is on the rise" (Nov 2025) https://www.fastcompany.com/91426929/what-is-skylight-tiktok-alternative-mark-cuban-at-protocol-bluesky-video

[4] Social Media Today — "Bluesky Adds Dedicated Video Feed" (Jan 21, 2025) https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/bluesky-adds-video-feed-decentralized-tiktok-alternative/737897/

[5] TechCrunch — "Bluesky backlash misses the point" (June 12, 2025) — the counterargument piece https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/12/bluesky-backlash-misses-the-point/

[6] TechCrunch — "Mark Cuban backs Skylight, a TikTok alternative built on Bluesky's underlying technology" (April 1, 2025) https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/01/mark-cuban-backs-skylight-a-tiktok-alternative-built-on-blueskys-underlying-technology/

[7] TechCrunch — "Skylight's TikTok alternative adds community curators to the mix" (Aug 26, 2025) — source for the Streamplace livestreaming partnership https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/26/skylights-tiktok-alternative-adds-community-curators-to-the-mix/