In the week after the US presidential election, the X alternative Bluesky gained more than a million new users, most of whom live in the US, Canada and Britain, according to a Bluesky spokesperson.
The influx of new users pushed Bluesky to a new milestone on Wednesday: The platform surpassed 15 million users. A month ago it had 12 million users. Bluesky topped the list of free iPhone apps on Tuesday, ahead of Threads, ChatGPT and Google.
According to the New York Times, Bluesky is benefiting from X users leaving the platform due to its owner Elon Musk and the results of the US presidential election.
But Bluesky is no stranger to growth following changes to X. In October, it gained 1.2 million new users in two days after X announced that the block button would no longer block someone from viewing public posts.
Related: X is making a controversial change and one of its rivals has gained 1.2 million new users in 2 days
Meta’s Threads also seem to attract more users; it surpassed 175 million users in July and 275 million in November, the company says.
What is Bluesky?
Bluesky began as an independent research project within what was then Twitter in 2019 with the goal of creating an open standard for social media platforms so that apps could work between them.
In 2022, it became its own company.
Bluesky will add .bsky.social to the end of your user handle. So if your name is “example”, the @example.bsky.social handle will be yours.
Who owns Bluesky?
Bluesky is principally owned by CEO Jay Graber and the Bluesky team. The company’s board of directors consists of Jabber/XMPP inventory Jeremie Miller, Mike Masnick; and Kinjal Shah.
What is the difference between Twitter and Bluesky?
Although Bluesky may look a lot like X, it gives users more choice. For example, when you sign up, you can choose to host your data on Bluesky or on your own custom server.
Related: Jack Dorsey Explains Bluesky Exit: “We’re literally repeating every mistake we’ve made” on Twitter
Bluesky users also have more control over what they see when they scroll. They have access to resources created by other users, such as “Science”, “Art” and “News”.
The platform currently has no ads.
“We believe there must be better strategies to sustain social networks that don’t require selling user data for ads,” Bluesky wrote in a July 2023 blog post.
Another difference: Bluesky’s post limit is 300 characters, which is slightly more than X’s 280 characters for free users.
How does posting on Bluesky compare to posting on X?
Here’s a recent post by Mark Cuban on Bluesky:
Hello, less hateful world
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban.bsky.social) Nov 12, 2024 at 8:37 am
This is one of the recent Cuban posts on X:
How to drive @X users are crazy
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) November 12, 2024
Is Bluesky still invite only?
Bluesky was invite-only until February, when it opened to everyone. The platform amassed 3 million users when it was invite-only, with 800,000 added on the first day it was public.
Related: I tried the “Anti-AI” app, which suddenly pulled half a million artists away from Instagram