BlueSky is back in the headlines as it gains almost one million additional members in less than two weeks following the US elections.
In an email sent to The New York Times earlier this week, a BlueSky spokesperson explained, “We’re seeing increased activity levels across all different forms of engagement.” The increased activity on BlueSky translates to the platform hosting close to 15 million users since it launched with a two million bump coming in late October of this year.
The surge in new members seem to be flooding in from Europe, Canada, and the US based on what BlueSky is reporting.
While it may be only anecdotal for now, many users landing on BlueSky have mentioned they’re seeking refuge from Twitter/X while also exploring other options such as Threads, Discord, and Reddit as suitable replacements.
Twitter/X was credited with 415 million worldwide users of which 335.7 million were active monthly users as of May 2024, but the social media platform has reported a five percent decline in annual user growth for the past couple of years. It’s unclear if there is a one-to-one conclusion to be drawn from the influx of BlueSky users and people leaving Twitter/X in the past two weeks but the timing seems more corollary than coincidence given the outspoken nature of Twitter/X’s owner Elon Musk during the US election season.
Meta’s Threads, which also presented itself as Twitter/X alternative host close to 250 million monthly active users also gained new users over the past two weeks. However, Meta’s top-down moderation implementations as well as its questionable algorithmic placements has allowed the clone-like BlueSky to persuade larger news organizations to call it home over Threads in the past few days and further validating the exodus from Twitter/X.
Other reasons people are flocking to BlueSky from Twitter/X could be the Feeds, Profile, Interactions, Direct Messaging, and post UI looks practically identical to Twitter/X. In addition to the familiar user interface, BlueSky users benefit from decentralized and customizable algorithms that don’t rely on company-owned servers and allow for users or communities to generate algorithms that surface groups of curated content.
How Custom Feeds Work
The BlueSky Team
Instead of using a black box algorithm that leaves users guessing how posts are ranked or how to get to the “top” of an algorithm, we provide an open marketplace of feeds and let users choose which ones they want to use.
This changes the game — for example, news publishers no longer need to guess what media format gets ranked at the top in order to deliver crucial information to readers. You can also think of these feeds as super-powered hashtags or lists. Whether you want to subscribe to a feed of only cat pictures or to posts from only your mutuals, this is possible.
In response to the influx of users, BlueSky recently announced its plans to offer premium features through a subscription model while leaving the bulk of the platform as free use. The BlueSky team hinted at premium features such as higher quality video uploads and additional profile customization that would go to users willing to pay a monthly subscription. Independent of its future feature announcements, the BlueSky team recently rolled out video posting, pinned posts, custom fonts, and ‘anti-toxicity’ filters to help users curate their content when shared by others.
There are still some basics that BlueSky has yet to adopt from Twitter/X such as bookmarks, profile notifications, and extended video posts, but for a nascent social media platform contending with established players, it’s done well for itself.
As more content creators, news sources and media outlets begin to double posts from Twitter/X or completely move over to BlueSky, it’ll be interesting to see how the former pivots in response.
