It has been making waves on social media and creating a buzz amongst internet users recently. Bluesky, a social media platform focusing on text-based communication, is seeing an explosive growth since November’s US election, establishing itself as an important competitor to X.
Traffic on Bluesky began to soar right after Donald Trump’s win in November, with daily usage up 500 percent in the United States, according to Similarweb. At the same time, more than 115,000 users deactivated their accounts on X, the largest-ever mass exit from the platform. In an interview with NPR, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, said the platform has been growing by about one million users a day. As of November 21, the platform had more than 20 million users. By November 2023 the number of users had exceeded a mere two million.
This week, many major news outlets like the BBC, the Guardian, NPR, MSNBC and SKY News have published long reports on the Bluesky phenomenon, with some, like the New York Times, using informative headlines such as “How to Use Bluesky If You’re Leaving X.”
Bluesky was created in 2019 as an internal research initiative at Twitter by then-CEO, Jack Dorsey, to explore decentralizing the platform. The original idea was to develop an open and decentralized platform that would give users more control. Dorsey stepped down from the board in May 2024 and in September deleted his account altogether. Today, Bluesky is run and predominantly owned by Jay Graber, who was hired in 2021 to lead the project as a US public benefit corporation. It launched as an invitation-only platform in February 2023 and opened registrations to the general public in February 2024.
In simple terms, Bluesky looks a lot like X, formerly known as Twitter, used to look. Its logo is a blue butterfly over a white background and the platform describes itself as “social media as it should be.” Users can post messages up to 300 characters long, repost and like their favorite things. The app, available on iOS and Android, has a decentralized framework, which is what makes it different and means users can host their data on servers others than those owned by the company.
Since Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, he has laid off more than 80 percent of the company’s employees. X users have been complaining that since then there has been a lack of moderation in the platform. Musk also began charging users for verification badges. In the months leading up to the US election, Musk, a staunch Trump supporter, has used the platform to boost support for the former president and promote right wing views. All this has led to an exodus from X, also known as the “X-odus.”
The Guardian, a British daily newspaper with millions of readers, announced days after the US election that it was leaving X, calling the media platform “toxic.” Actress Jamie Lee Curtis, author Stephen King, singer Barbara Streisand and actor Ben Stiller are only a few of the celebrities who have either left X recently or opted to join Bluesky.
Adam Tinworth, a social media expert and digital journalism lecturer at City St. George’s University, told SKY News that people aren’t just leaving X for political reasons. He says that the “gutting” of the organization has resulted in a worse experience on the platform.
While celebrities, journalists and politicians have joined Bluesky, the platform is still relatively small. Although its recent growth has been significant, it would have to continue for a long time before the platform could become a serious challenge to its micro-blogging rival, which according to Elon Musk has 250 million users each day.
Social media researchers say problems like harassment and hate speech tend to flood all platforms when they get big enough. Bluesky is not there yet.
“It’s small and you can curate a list of people who you find interesting and funny. It feels like Twitter a decade ago,” Dave Karpf, a media and public affairs professor at Georgetown University and an early Bluesky adopter, told NPR in an interview. “It takes out the algorithmic ‘The computer is going to tell you what you want and you better want it.’ Instead, you pick who you want to talk and listen to and talk to them,” he added.
