Over the past several days, there’s been a significant shift in the popularity of a relatively small social media platform called Bluesky. Though this dramatic growth is likely consequential to the results of the U.S. presidential election, there’s reason to believe that Bluesky was already bulking up its user base way before that.
For one, ever since Twitter turned into X after Elon Musk acquired the microblogging site in 2022, a growing number of people have been fleeing the platform to join alternative social networks. And it just so happened that Bluesky was among those alternatives to benefit from the user exodus from X.
What is Bluesky?
Bluesky is a decentralized social media platform, which started as an internal project in 2019 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s then-CEO. The renowned programmer formed a small team of developers to work on potential new industry standards for social media. This could explain why Bluesky has a look and feel similar to Twitter before it became X.
In addition to its user interface and features, the name Bluesky is also inspired by the microblogging site, with CNET reporting that the developers came up with its moniker while thinking about the Twitter bird mascot flying “freely in an open blue sky.”
Mapping the unprecedented growth of Bluesky
Bluesky became an independent company in 2021 with Jay Graber as CEO, and the platform initially launched as invitation-only in 2023. Under his leadership, the social network was able to grow its user base to 3 million before it shifted to open registration in February 2024.
Interestingly, even without an aggressive marketing campaign, Bluesky continued to expand its number of users by simply being an alternative to X. When X was temporarily banned in Brazil near the end of August this year, Bluesky gained around 2.6 million users within a week. The company reported that 85% of its new global users were from Brazil.
Additionally, as Musk kept on making changes to X’s policies, the platform also kept losing users, who would then find their way to Bluesky. For instance, when X announced changes to how blocked accounts would now be able to view a user’s public posts in October, Bluesky recorded 500,000 new sign-ups by the next day.
During the week following the Nov. 5 presidential election, Bluesky gained 1 million new users, reaching over 15 million total users. The latest updates indicate that Bluesky has now surpassed 19 million registered users, a massive jump from the 10 million users in September, noted NDTV.
How Bluesky is coping with newfound popularity
As a relatively small app, Bluesky still does not have the capability to handle such a sudden upsurge in its user base. On Thursday last week, the company experienced a global outage, with users from different parts of the world struggling to access their feeds or load notifications. According to the BBC, the issue was resolved the same day, but the company was not able to provide assurance it won’t happen again.
Another problem that Bluesky has been dealing with ever since it became more popular is the growing number of trolls, spam and scam accounts on its platform. Just last week, it garnered 42,000 moderation reports in one day. In response, the company said it is hiring new monitoring members and implementing email verification for new sign-ups.
More than its similarities to defunct Twitter, Bluesky’s allure lies in the company’s more sensible approach to social networking. By having a decentralized system, users gain full control over their data and interactions—something X lost along the way with its policy changes. All things considered, Bluesky is on the right track to becoming the next big thing in the social media industry, provided it is able to keep up with the demand.
Photo by Yohan Marion/Unsplash.com
