X users jump to Bluesky – but what is it and who owns it?

It is the million dollar question, quite literally.

Bluesky started off with funding from investors and venture capital firms and has raised tens of millions of dollars through these means.

But with so many new users, it is going to have to find a way to pay the bills.

Back in Twitter’s heyday, the site made the vast majority of its money through advertising.

Bluesky has said it wants to avoid this. Instead, it said it will continue to look into paid services, such as having people pay for custom domains in their username.

That sounds complicated but it basically comes down to a person’s username being even more personalised.

For example, it may mean my username – @twgerken.bsky.social – could in the future be more official-sounding, such as @twgerken.bbc.co.uk.

Proponents of this idea say it doubles-up as a form of verification as the organisation which owns the website would have to clear its use.

If Bluesky’s owners continue to avoid advertising, they may inevitably have to look to other broader options, such as subscription features, as a way of keeping the lights on.

But if it is not making very much money, that would not be unusual for tech startups.

In fact, Twitter, before it was purchased by Mr Musk in 2022, only made a profit twice in its eight years of being publicly traded.

And we all know how that ended – a massive payday for investors when the world’s richest man paid $44bn (£34.7bn) for the privilege of owning it.

For now, the future of Bluesky remains unknown, but if its growth continues, anything is possible.