Bluesky, a social network competitor to X, is benefiting from a surge in people leaving the Elon Musk-owned app, formerly known as Twitter. Today, Bluesky has reached a major milestone by surpassing 20 million users. Additionally, new data shows that the app’s rapid growth has narrowed the gap with Instagram Threads, another prominent X rival, in metrics such as daily active users and website visits.
Bluesky’s user base is much smaller than Threads, but Threads recently reported more than 275 million monthly active users. But if Bluesky maintains its current growth rate, market intelligence firm SimilarWeb believes it could eventually catch up with Threads.
According to the company’s data, Threads’ daily active users (DAU) were five times higher than Bluesky’s before the US election, but on November 15, Bluesky’s peak day of activity, Threads’ lead over Bluesky was small. It had shrunk by 1.5 times. United States (Daily active users include iOS and Android mobile apps, not website visitors.)
Instagram head Adam Mosseri denied that Similarweb’s data is accurate, but Meta does not share DAUs.
But Musk-owned app X remains dominant, and currently has more than 10 times as many daily active users in the U.S. as Bluesky.
The company’s data also shows that Bluesky surpassed Threads in daily website visits in both the US and UK, indicating strong interest from potential new users. Globally, Bluesky has not yet surpassed Threads in daily website visits, but as of mid-November, it’s getting pretty close.
Similarly, adoption of the Bluesky mobile app is also increasing, reports Similarweb. Usage of BlueSky’s app in the U.S. from the election through November 15 increased by 519% compared to the first 10 months of this year. The UK also saw a sharp rise in usage, with usage increasing by 352%.
According to app intelligence provider Appfigures, Bluesky became the number one app in the US App Store on November 13th and has not lost that position ever since. This puts it ahead of Threads (4th place) and X (41st place). The App Store’s graph evaluates a combination of installs and their pace, along with other metrics, so this increase is related not only to app downloads but also to Bluesky’s growth rate.
The company says that worldwide usage of the Bluesky app (on Android devices) has increased by more than 360% compared to the first half of this year. The pattern looks different here, as Bluesky’s daily active user numbers on Android briefly spiked due to an influx of Brazilian users when X was banned in Brazil. (The data also suggests that some may have returned to X once Brazil’s ban was lifted.)
Considering Bluesky only opened to the public in February after a long invite-only period, its growth is impressive. Bluesky has more than doubled its user base since September, when its network surpassed 9 million users. Shortly after the U.S. presidential election, the app started gaining around 100,000 users per day, but the pace quickly increased when the company announced on November 12 that: added Added 1 million users in the past week. By November 13, Bluesky achieved its last major milestone of 15 million users.
Elon Musk’s use of X to campaign for President-elect Donald Trump has certainly spurred some defection, but other Bluesky newcomers are changing the way their blocking feature works. The decision to leave X may have been due to other changes, such as a decision to change a policy or a decision to change a new policy. Allows the sale of user data to AI companies for training purposes.
Updated to include Adam Mosseri’s denial.
