Over a Million People Have Recently Joined Bluesky, the Ad-Free X Alternative and Threads Competitor Bluesky has been seeing noticeable growth since the election, though its user numbers are nowhere close to Meta's X competitor, Threads.
By Sherin Shibu Edited by Melissa Malamut
Key Takeaways
- X rival Bluesky added three million users in a month, with over one million signing up the week after the U.S. presidential election.
- Bluesky now has over 15 million users.
In the week following the U.S. presidential election, X alternative Bluesky gained over a million new users, most of whom live in the U.S., Canada, and Britain, according to a Bluesky spokesperson.
The influx of new users propelled Bluesky to a new milestone on Wednesday: The platform crossed the 15 million user mark. One month ago, it had 12 million users. Bluesky was at the top of the iPhone free apps list on Tuesday, ahead of Threads, ChatGPT, and Google.
According to the New York Times, Bluesky is benefitting from X users leaving the platform due to its owner Elon Musk , and the results of the U.S. presidential election.
But the Bluesky is no stranger to growth following changes on X. In October it obtained 1.2 million new users in two days after X announced that the block button would no longer block someone from seeing public posts.
Related: X Is Making a Controversial Change, and One of Its Rivals Gained 1.2 Million New Users in 2 Days
Meta's Threads also appears to be drawing more users; it passed 175 million users in July and 275 million in November, the company says.
What is Bluesky?
Bluesky began as an independent research project within then-Twitter in 2019 to create an open standard for social media platforms so that apps could work between them.
It became its own company in 2022.
Bluesky adds a .bsky.social to the end of your user handle. So if your name is "example" the user handle @example.bsky.social would be yours.
Who owns Bluesky?
Bluesky is mainly owned by CEO Jay Graber and the Bluesky team. The company's board consists of Jabber/XMPP inventor Jeremie Miller, Mike Masnick; and Kinjal Shah.
What is the difference between Twitter and Bluesky?
Though Bluesky may look a lot like X, it gives users more choice. When you sign up, for example, you can choose to host your data with Bluesky or with a custom server of your own.
Related: Jack Dorsey Explains Bluesky Exit: 'Literally Repeating All the Mistakes We Made' at Twitter
Bluesky users also have more control over what they see when they're scrolling. They can access feeds created by other users like "Science," "Art," and "News."
The platform currently does not have ads.
"We believe that there must be better strategies to sustain social networks that don't require selling user data for ads," Bluesky wrote in a blog post on July 2023.
Another difference: Bluesky's limit for posts is 300 characters, which is slightly more than X's 280 characters for free users.
What does a post look like on Bluesky compared to a post on X?
This is what a recent post from Mark Cuban looks like on Bluesky:
Hello Less Hateful World
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban.bsky.social) November 12, 2024 at 8:37 AM
This is one of Cuban's recent posts on X:
How to drive @X users crazy
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) November 12, 2024
Is Bluesky still invite-only?
Bluesky was invite-only until February when it opened up to all. The platform amassed 3 million users when it was invitation-only, with 800,000 added on its first day going public.
Related: I Tried the 'Anti-AI App' That Suddenly Drew Half a Million Artists Away From Instagram
