Bluesky is riding high this week, with the Twitter/X alternative seeing a massive boost in users, most notably in the US.
The social networking app is currently sitting at the number two position in the free social networking app in the US App Store and has gained more than 700,000 new users.
It hit 10 million users in September, which included a bumper crop from Brazil after the social media app was banned in the country.
Meteoric Growth
Bluesky COO Rose Wang has confirmed to The Verge that the platform now has more than 14.5 million users.
Since it launched to the wider public in February, it has enjoyed rapid growth as users swarm to its promise of “anti-toxicity” features and ease of use. The fact that it has the backing of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has also cemented its position as a rival to X.
In a move away from the model adopted by rivals, it claims to be a “social app that is designed to not be controlled by a single company.” Central to this claim is the user’s ability to move data like their friend groups and followers over to competing social networks.
Bluesky Benefitting From X Backlash
However, its growing popularity also reflects rising disgruntlement with X for a range of reasons including politics and policies.
The surge in the past week is unofficially being put down to an exodus from the competing platform following the US presidential election. This could be attributed to owner Musk’s rampant support for Donald Trump; his attacks on Democrat supporters (including Taylor Swift) and the increasing amount of hate speech that X is spewing is certainly not winning over many users.
But other factors may also have come into play to drive X users to look elsewhere. There was anger at the new AI Training Clause that Musk snuck in four weeks ago that doesn’t have an opt-out clause. And the decision to dilute the power of the block feature also caused consternation.
Now, as Musk himself explained in a post: “The block function will block that account from engaging with, but not block seeing, public post.”
Threads Still Number One
As X loses users, Instagram’s Threads is still doing well, despite recent glitches with moderation. Threads now has 275 million active users.
While Bluesky isn’t going to take Threads’ crown anytime soon given its connection to Instagram, it is going to become increasingly attractive to users fed up with X.
Musk is unlikely to bow to pressure from disgruntled users. After all, he declared war on unhappy advertisers, so Bluesky is looking like an increasingly attractive – and safe – space for those unhappy customers.
