Emerging social media platform Bluesky reported on Thursday that 1 million users had signed up in one day. It appears some disgruntled X users have flocked to the new network in recent weeks.
What is Blue Sky?
Bluesky started as an internal project by then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in 2019, but was invite-only until it opened to the public in February. From 2021, it will become an independent company, with Jay Graeber appointed as CEO.
Currently, there are approximately 18 million users. Graeber posted Friday that the platform’s user count is growing by 10,000 people every 10 to 15 minutes.
Although Bluesky remains small compared to established online spaces, it has emerged as an alternative for those looking for a different vibe and less influenced by X owner Elon Musk, a close ally of President-elect Donald. I did.
Why is Bluesky growing?
Two days before the surge in registrations, President Trump announced He said he would appoint billionaires Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as part of his second government and co-lead the new government efficiency ministry. Mr. Musk’s super PAC $200 million support for President Trump’s 2024 election campaign.
Musk buys Twitter He made changes to the company, reducing headcount and removing protocols that had created guardrails on the platform.
Online analytics tool Similarweb reported that X experienced a peak in deactivations around the world the day after Election Day, with 115,000 web visitors deleting their accounts. In December 2023, X had the second highest number of deactivations. musk is back According to SimilarWeb, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones joined the platform and about 65,000 users deleted their accounts.
Brazilian judge temporarily bans X It also caused a mass migration of users to other platforms in the South American country in late August, according to the Associated Press.
BlueSky reported gaining 500,000 new users from August 28th to August 30th, just before the outage.
It is difficult to know how many users X has since it is currently a private company and does not share recent usage data. However, analytics firm Exploding Topics estimates that the number of monthly active users was approximately 611 million as of April. “X usage is at an all-time high and continues to skyrocket,” X CEO Linda Yaccarino posted on Wednesday.
On the same day, Musk issued new terms of service allowing X to use the account’s posts and images to train its artificial intelligence platform.
Who quit X?
U.S. brands that have stopped posting on X or permanently closed their accounts include Target, UnitedHealth Group, Playbill, and media companies such as NPR and The Guardian. Several other prominent accounts with large numbers of followers said they were leaving X.
New York University professor and historian Ruth Ben Guiat told the Guardian this week that she is still on X, but that the platform will be run by someone who could become a member of the Trump administration after January. He said he was concerned about it.
While Bluesky is unlikely to surpass X anytime soon, its growing popularity may signal a shift in social media culture, with users joining or leaving the platform depending on the political environment.
Users may also be looking at Bluesky, which has a similar look and feel to X or “old Twitter.” It works as both a website and an app. Similar to X, Bluesky has a list feature that allows users to add a collection of accounts into one group. Users can then make bulk decisions such as block, mute, and follow.
Another platform that has served as an alternative platform is the meta thread that started as a challenge to Mask X. In October, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that it had 275 million monthly users.
Both Bluesky and Threads currently display no ads.
