Dril and AOC are now on Bluesky

Two Twitter icons joined Bluesky on Thursday. Dril was first, with AOC joining shortly after.

The invite-only decentralized Twitter alternative has been gaining steam in recent days — I’ve seen a lot of people I follow on the bird-themed social network start to show up on Bluesky. But the Twitter clone might truly begin to feel like a New Twitter now that Dril (the Twitter legend who recently gave an interview as his real-life human self) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have officially joined the platform.

There’s nothing on Dril’s Bluesky profile that makes it absolutely clear that it’s really him. (He hasn’t tied a domain name to his handle, for example.) Dril has posted once, but it’s an extremely not-safe-for-work post that I will not be including here. But Paul Frazee, a staff engineer at Bluesky, confirmed Thursday that the Dril profile @dril.bsky.social is the real deal.

Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

Dril’s appearance is also notable because he’s been dunking on Twitter for the past little while and has been a key advocate of the #BlockTheBlue campaign to block people with Twitter Blue verification checkmarks. I don’t know if Dril is going to move full time to Bluesky — I’d honestly doubt he will in the near term given the platform isn’t publicly available yet — but if Dril stops posting on Twitter, I’d bet you can find his shitposts on Bluesky.

Ocasio-Cortez also hasn’t yet tied a domain name to her profile, which is currently @aoc.bsky.social, but Bluesky staffer Daniel Holmgren confirmed that it’s actually her.

Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

On Thursday evening, Bluesky said the day was its “biggest single-day” jump in users ever and that it would be upgrading its database at 5:30PM ET, resulting in five minutes of downtime.

Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

With two of Twitter’s biggest personalities now on Bluesky, any bets on how long until we can’t talk about Bluesky on Twitter? It wouldn’t be unprecedented.

Update April 27th: 5:29PM ET: Added that Bluesky would be performing maintenance because of the influx of users.