Social media startup and X competitor Bluesky is working on a subscription model. The company first announced plans to develop a new revenue stream based on a subscription model when it detailed its $15 million Series A back in October. Now, mockups have appeared on Bluesky’s GitHub, teasing an upcoming Bluesky subscription, as well as a list of possible features.
Although the company cautions on GitHub that this list is just a mockup of the user interface, and that paid features may well change before launch, there is reason to believe that at least some of these are being considered for Bluesky’s premium subscription.
Previously, when discussing its subscription model last fall, Bluesky said in a blog post that it would offer premium features such as “higher quality video uploads or profile customization such as avatar colors and borders.” Both of these features are now included in the user interface layout of the subscription, which is now known as Bluesky+.
Additionally, placeholder text in the mockup indicates that Bluesky may be considering other paid features such as custom app icons, a Bluesky+ profile icon, inline post translations, post analytics, and bookmark folders – a feature set that could rival X.
The most interesting thing is that Bluesky+ may be considering including verification (profile badges) as part of its subscription, unless this feature is just placeholder text and not an idea that Bluesky is developing. However, the company recently spoke about its plans for verification and how the open nature of its network may make its system work quite differently than paid verification on the X and Meta platforms. While this may be true, it would be interesting if Bluesky did decide to put its verification tools behind a kind of paywall.
The mockup also shows a price of $8 per month or $72 per year for Bluesky+, but this is not the final price either.
The user interface mockup was spotted by Bluesky user @saeri.xyz, whose post about the discovery received hundreds of likes, quotes, and reposts on the new social network, which now has 24.7 million users.
Bluesky programmer Dan Abramov, who previously worked on React and Redux at Meta, responded to the thread to warn Bluesky users that the list of features shown in the mockup “doesn’t necessarily coincide with what will be released.”
“Some of these are likely to appear, but please don’t take this as an actual list of planned features,” he wrote in his response to Bluesky. “We will announce the actual list when more work is done.”
Abramov also explained that the “coming soon” label means nothing, as it is just an interface test for future features.
Despite the warning that nothing is final, Bluesky users were eager to discuss the possibilities of a Bluesky subscription, with some criticizing the proposed paid features and others suggesting other features they would like to see in a subscription, among others.
Subscriptions are not the only model Bluesky is considering. Bluesky CEO Jay Graber recently pointed to other efforts, such as selling domain names, an algorithm marketplace, and even potentially selling advertising, as other things the company might consider to help it make money.
We have reached out to Bluesky for additional comment and will update this article if we hear back.
