Is Twitter's Reign Under Threat from Dorsey's Upstart Rival? Parag Agrawal's Bold Move To Bluesky

Twitter’s former CEO, Parag Agrawal, can now be reached via his account on the Jack Dorsey-based Bluesky platform. This development might raise concerns for Elon Musk and his Twitter 2.0. 

What Happened: On Tuesday, tech tweeter Jane Manchun Wong took to Twitter to share the news that Agrawal has joined Bluesky, the Twitter rival backed by Dorsey. 

Bluesky is a decentralized social media company that released the invite-only version of the app on Google Play Store last week, after rolling it out on Apple’s App Store in February. 

See Also: Facebook Parent Building Decentralized Text-Based Social Network, Challenging Elon Musk’s Twitter

He changed his Bluesky handle to "https://t.co/NbvXEOXR46" https://t.co/cou58Q5h2C

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) April 25, 2023

When asked how she verified that the account belongs to the former Twitter CEO, Wong responded to Benzinga via email saying, “At some point the Bluesky account “paraga.bsky.social” changed their handle to a custom domain called “para.ga” which isn’t registered recently.” 

According to Wong, the custom domain, to a certain extent, indicates that the account belongs to Agrawal. “Personally, I do hope there would be more proofs about the account ownership, but he hasn’t been posting Tweets much since the Elon takeover.”

Agrawal’s official Twitter account — which doesn’t have a blue tick — hasn’t been active since October 2022. 

Bluesky and Agrawal did not immediately respond to Benzinga’s request for comments. 

Bluesky Vs. Twitter Vs. Mastodon: When asked about Wong’s assessment, as a tech expert, about using these social media platforms, she said, “It feels quite casual and positive on Bluesky compared to Twitter and Mastodon.”

Wong also compared “the vibe on Bluesky at the moment” to the pre-Musk takeover days at Twitter. “I think a lot of us are longtime Twitter users looking for a replacement elsewhere.”

Why It’s Important: Agrawal served as the CEO of Twitter from November 2021 to October 2022, after which he was relieved of his duties as Musk acquired the social media platform for $44 billion.  

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, in a recent interview, said that the platform saw its waitlist jump to over 1.2 million and has accepted 20,000 people as of now. Graber also doesn’t see Mastodon — a rival decentralized social media platform — as competition for Bluesky. 

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