Insights

BlueSky is emerging as a notable player in the social media landscape, aiming to rival X (formerly Twitter) as the leading platform for short-form content. The platform was started by Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s former CEO, who has since left BlueSky.

Recent data shows that BlueSky’s daily user numbers have increased dramatically. Meanwhile, deactivations of X accounts continue to rise, heightened by Donald Trump’s election win in the US in November. What we know so far about BlueSky’s usage:

• Users have almost doubled over the past two months – 20 million users on BlueSky as of November 2024 compared to 13 million users in October 2024. For context, TikTok has 1.52 billion users, and X has almost 336 million.
• 649 million total posts on the platform – and counting.

• Influential figures from across industries have opened BlueSky accounts and abandoned X, including author Stephen King, singer Barbara Streisand, director Guillermo del Toro CNN presenter Don Lemon and many more.
• Web searches for BlueSky in the UK increased by 22% between October and November 2024.

• While BlueSky is growing, only a few social media listening tools, such as Meltwater, have confirmed access to this data and plan to roll it out in early Q1 2025. If some listening tools don’t yet have access, this might be because the platform doesn’t have critical mass yet, but more likely because it takes a while for commercial contracts and API sharing to reach completion.

While the prominence of misinformation and harmful content increases on X, BlueSky positions itself as the antidote to this, “social media as it should be” according to the platform’s tagline.

One of BlueSky’s standout features is its emphasis on user control, offering enhanced privacy, data security and innovative tools for brands to engage audiences in new ways. Its algorithm is built on “a decentralized, open-source technology that is designed to let users control how they experience social media”. These features position the platform as a potential disruptor, though it is still too early to determine its long-term viability as a key communications channel.

Twitter was once the origin of important conversations, crucial communities such as ‘black Twitter’ and social/political movements, including #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName and many more. Since Elon Musk’s takeover of X in 2022, users have seen a rise in hate speech and offensive or harmful content. According to Forbes, the number of antisemitic tweets has more than doubled since Musk’s takeover. Under his ownership, the platform has taken a turn into a right-wing echo chamber fuelling hateful conversations where the voices of a select few appear inescapably louder than anyone else’s. People are looking for somewhere that fills the void of what Twitter once was. Meta’s Threads doesn’t quite match up, although the platform has made some BlueSky-like changes to its algorithm, according to The New York Times, but ultimately hasn’t quite managed to be the place of respite from X’s increasingly stifling conditions as of yet.

With a growing audience moving away from X and similarly Threads, it is important to monitor BlueSky’s development closely. Depending on how the platform progresses in the coming months, businesses should assess whether it could become a valuable addition to their communications strategy.

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