While Meta’s Threads has long been considered the most obvious successor to Twitter, in the wake of Elon Musk’s changes at the app, Bluesky is also emerging as a potential challenger in the real-time social space, with the platform today announcing that it’s now up to 13 million users.

Bluesky added some 2 million more users over the last week, largely in response to X’s coming changes to blocking, which has prompted many to take another look at the app, and the potential for Bluesky to become a real challenger in the space.

The key hurdle for Bluesky is ongoing funding, and ensuring that it remains a viable business, without the backing of Twitter, its original investor. On that front, Bluesky has also announced that it’s raised $15 million in Series A financing, led by Blockchain Capital, which will ensure that it’s able to continue its development.

As noted, Bluesky was originally funded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who allocated $13 million of money from Twitter to the project as part of a five-year service agreement back in 2022. Upon his purchase of Twitter later that year, Elon Musk canceled the deal, and cut future financial support for the project. That left Bluesky on its own, but the platform raised an additional $8 million in funding last July.

And now, it’s got another injection of cash to continue its development.

Bluesky has also highlighted plans for future funding models, and monetization features, which it hopes will provide it with a more reliable path forward.

Bluesky says that it’s developing a subscription model, which would enable users to pay for add-on features “like higher quality video uploads or profile customizations like colors and avatar frames”, while it’s also looking to establish a voluntary monetization path for creators, as part of its broader ecosystem planning.

That, eventually, could set the platform on a path for growth, and a more sustainable strategy, but could Bluesky really steal the momentum behind Meta’s Threads, and become the true replacement for Twitter for those who seek it?

That would certainly raise the hackles of Musk, given that Bluesky was an offshoot of the original app, and created by Twitter itself. Which is why Bluesky looks so much like Twitter, and in this sense, it really is the most logical successor to the app, given that it is, essentially, Twitter, run by former Twitter staff, and most closely represents what Twitter had been.

But it’s also decentralized, which is a key element that proponents of data security and individual choice are keen to boost. The problem with decentralized social apps is that they involve a lot more manual intervention to customize and maximize such features to the full extent. And most users simply don’t want to do that.

Most people just want to log on and start engaging with content, which means that additional elements like choosing a server and customizing your algorithm details are an annoyance, not a benefit. But maybe, if Bluesky can gain critical mass, that could usher in the next stage of decentralized social, which will make users more aware and aligned to such, even with the extra steps.

It’s still got a long way to go, and Threads is still a long way ahead, at 200 million active users (and rising). But maybe, Bluesky does have more life in it than many expected, and it will be able to bring decentralized social to a more mainstream audience.

The key consideration is content, and getting more influential users to post there exclusively. If that happens, that will expand the Bluesky audience, and make it a more significant consideration.