TL;DRBluesky launched group chats (up to 50 people) and is building Reddit-style communities with custom handles. Growth has slowed at 44.8M vs X’s 600M.
Bluesky launched group chats on Thursday and outlined a broader pivot toward community features, a strategic shift for a social network that has so far focused on open public posting. Group chats support up to 50 people in the current release. The company says it may increase that limit later.
The feature arrives in version 1.124 of the app. Chat creators control who can participate and can generate invite links that display as embedded cards when shared in Bluesky posts. Users can set who is allowed to invite them: everyone, only people they follow, or no one. Media sharing in group chats is not yet supported because it requires additional safety and moderation systems.
The more significant announcement is what comes next. Head of product Alex Benzer said Bluesky will build communities, smaller spaces inside the platform where users go deeper on shared interests. Communities will have their own handle that doubles as a URL, like community-name.bsky.social. They can be public, invite-only, or private.
“Today, Bluesky is one big space. Communities will be smaller spaces inside that where you can go deeper and hang out with people who care about the same stuff,” Benzer wrote. The features will be built on the underlying AT Protocol with support from the wider developer ecosystem.
