The user base of social media X is plummeting, as people continue deactivating their accounts and migrating to Bluesky Social, a competitor that resembles Twitter in its early days.
Recently, Bluesky surged to the top of Apple's and Google's app stores' rankings in the U.S. as numerous users of Elon Musk's platform closed their accounts following the U.S. presidential election.
And this sort of user migration has already happened elsewhere. When Brazil's Supreme Court banned X after Musk refused to comply with orders to prevent disinformation, millions of users resorted to Bluesky, as the platform works and looks very much like Twitter.
A post shared last week by Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says the platform had 6 million users in late August, nearly 11 million by late October and 15 million on Nov. 15. In just five days, it added another 5 million users, with its explosive growth accelerating after the election.
Once a Twitter affiliate, Bluesky was developed in 2019 by then Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey. In 2021, Bluesky was launched as a separate independent company.
With Bluesky, “you’re no longer tied to a dominant algorithm that promotes either the most polarizing posts and/or the biggest brands,” said Rose Wang, Bluesky’s chief operating officer, in a recent video posted on X.“It’s built by the people, for the people,” she added.
With publications now opening accounts on Bluesky, expect to see more content in the coming weeks and months. The wide range of publications now regularly posting on Bluesky includes: The Guardian, Bloomberg, The Times of London, The Verge, Financial Times, The New York Times, The Athletic, ProPublica, NPR, Bellingcat, The Intercept, Slate, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Economist, Le Monde, Vanity Fair, The Globe and Mail, San Francisco Chronicle, IGN, The Onion, Drop Site, TechCrunch, Hong Kong Free Press, Vox, Newsweek, HuffPost, El Pais, 404 Media, Gizmodo and Kotaku.
It is unknown how many monthly active users X has in the U.S. Estimates are around 100 million, but it is uncertain how many of those users are human and how many are bots.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: X users moving to Bluesky after presidential election
