In the week following the US presidential election, another iX Bluesky gained more than a million new users, most of whom live in the US, Canada, and Britain, according to a Bluesky spokesperson.
The influx of new users propelled Bluesky to a new milestone on Wednesday: The platform surpassed the 15 million user mark. One month ago, it had 12 million users. Bluesky topped the list of free iPhone apps on Tuesday, ahead of Threads, ChatGPT, and Google.
According to the New York Times, Bluesky is benefiting from X users who left the platform because of its owner Elon Musk, and the results of the US presidential election.
But Bluesky is no stranger to growth following changes to X. In October it gained 1.2 million new users two days after X announced that the block button would no longer prevent someone from seeing social posts.
Related: UX Makes a Controversial Change, and One of Its Competitors Gains 1.2 Million New Users in 2 Days
Meta braids also seem to attract a lot of users; it surpassed 175 million users in July and 275 million in November, the company said.
What is Bluesky?
Bluesky started as an independent research project within then-Twitter in 2019 to create an open standard for social networks so that applications can work between them.
It became its own company in 2022.
Bluesky adds .bsky.social to the end of your username. So if your name is “example” the username @example.bsky.social could be yours.
Who owns Bluesky?
Bluesky is managed by CEO Jay Graber and the Bluesky team. The company’s board consists of Jabber/XMPP founder Jeremy Miller, Mike Masnick; and Kinjal Shah.
What is the difference between Twitter and Bluesky?
Although Bluesky may look similar to X, it gives users more choices. When you sign up, for example, you can choose to host your data with Bluesky or with your own custom server.
Related: Jack Dorsey Explains Bluesky Exit: ‘Excessively Repeating All the Mistakes We’ve Made’ on Twitter
Bluesky users also have more control over what they see when scrolling. They can access feeds created by other users such as “Science,” “Art,” and “News.”
The platform currently has no ads.
“We believe there must be better strategies for maintaining social networks that do not require selling users’ data for ads,” Bluesky wrote in a blog post in July 2023.
Another difference: Bluesky’s post limit is 300 characters, slightly more than X’s 280 characters for free users.
How does a post on Bluesky look compared to a post on X?
This is what a recent post from Mark Cuban looks like on Bluesky:
Hello World With Less Hate
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban.bsky.social) November 12, 2024 at 8:37 AM
This is one of Cuba’s latest posts on X:
How do you drive? @X users are crazy
– Mark Cuban (@mcuban) November 12, 2024
Is Bluesky still invite only?
Bluesky was invite-only until February when it opened to the public. The platform amassed 3 million users while it was invitation-only, and 800,000 were added on its first day in public.
Related: I Tried The ‘Anti-AI App’ That Just Removed Half A Million Artists From Instagram
