What is Bluesky, the online platform welcoming users leaving Elon Musk's X?
Bluesky, a fledgling social media platform, reported Thursday that 1 million users had signed up in a single day. Some frustrated X users appear to have flocked to the newer network in recent weeks.
What is BlueSky?
Bluesky, which began as an internal project by then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in 2019, was invitation-only until it opened to the public in February. Since 2021, it has been an independent company with Jay Graber as its CEO.
It currently has about 18 million users. Graber posted Friday that the platform is growing by 10,000 users every 10 to 15 minutes.
While Bluesky remains small compared to established online spaces, it has emerged as an alternative for those looking for a different mood and less influenced by X owner Elon Musk, a close ally of President-elect Donald Trump.
Why is Bluesky growing?
Two days before the sign-up surge, Trump announced that he would tap billionaires Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to be part of his second administration, co-leading the new Department of Government Efficiency. Musk's super PAC also spent around $200 million supporting Trump's 2024 election campaign.
Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and rebranded it as X in July 2023. He has implemented changes to the company, cutting staff and removing protocols that created guardrails on the platform.
According to Similarweb, an online analytics tool, X experienced peak worldwide deactivations the day after Election Day, with 115,000 web visitors reportedly deleting their accounts. In December 2023, X experienced its second-highest deactivation numbers after Musk restored conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to the platform, with about 65,000 users deleting their accounts, per Similarweb.
A Brazilian judge temporarily banned X in the South American country in late August, which also caused a mass migration of users to other platforms, according to the Associated Press.
Bluesky reported that it gained half a million new users from Aug. 28 to Aug. 30, just prior to the suspension.
It is difficult to know how many users X has since it is now a private company and has not shared recent usage data. However, analytics firm Exploding Topics estimates it had about 611 million active monthly users as of April. X CEO Linda Yaccarino posted Wednesday that "X usage is at an all-time high and continues to surge."
That same day, Musk issued new terms and conditions that allow X to use accounts' posts and images to train its artificial intelligence platform.
Who has left X?
U.S. brands that have stopped posting to X or shuttered their accounts entirely include Target, UnitedHealth Group, Playbill and media companies like NPR and The Guardian. Several other prominent accounts with big followers said they would be departing X.
New York University professor and historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat told The Guardian this week that she is still on X, but is concerned about having a possible Trump administration member running the platform after January.
While Bluesky is not likely to surpass X anytime soon, its rise in popularity could point to a shift in social media culture in which users sign up for or leave platforms depending on the political environment.
Users might also be turning to Bluesky because it has a similar look and feel to X, or "old Twitter." It operates both as a website and an app. Like X, Bluesky has a list feature that allows users to add a collection of accounts into one group. Then, users can make bulk decisions, like blocking, muting or following.
Another platform that has served as an alternative is Meta's Threads, which began as a challenge to Musk's X. In October, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that it has 275 million monthly users.
Both Bluesky and Threads do not currently show advertisements.