Bluesky reaches 15 million users after getting one million registrations in one week

Bluesky may still be the underdog in the race to replace X, but the service once merged with Twitter is growing. The app recently passed the 15 million user mark after adding more than a million new users last week, the company said in an update.

While Bluesky is still much smaller than Threads, which with 275 million users is its biggest competitor, there are signs that Threads users have been curious about starting at the top. “Bluesky” has been a trending topic on Threads in recent days and the in-app search suggestion shows that there are over 19,000 posts about “Bluesky.” Bluesky itself has also been winning over Threads users in recent weeks by regularly posting on the Meta-managed service.

That effort seems to be working. Last month, Engadget, the service had less than 9 million users. Its mobile app also holds the top spot in Apple’s App Store, followed by Threads and ChatGPT. Its recent success also appears to be driven, at least in part, by frustration with Elon Musk and X following the US presidential election.

A recent report from web analytics firm SimilarWeb found that “more than 115,000 US web surfers closed their accounts,” on November 7, “more than any previous day in Elon Musk’s tenure.” The report also noted that Bluesky’s “web traffic and daily active users increased significantly in the week before the election, and again after Election Day,” with Bluesky at points seeing more web traffic than Threads. (The mobile implementation of Threads, however, is still “a long way” from Bluesky.)

“In the US, Bluesky received more web traffic than Threads shortly after the election,” the report notes. “In context, it’s important to note that both of these services are application-oriented, or support web user interaction.”

On the other hand, Bluesky appears to be aiming to differentiate itself from its larger, billionaire-controlled rivals. The company, which started as an internal project at Twitter before becoming an independent entity, has tried new features such as , user-generated and “” new users.

“You’re almost used to being locked into one algorithm controlled by a small group of people, that’s not the case anymore,” Bluesky’s COO Rose Wang shared aimed at new users on Tuesday. “On Bluesky, there are about 50,000 different feeds … these feeds provide a cozy place to meet people with similar interests. And you can really make friends again, because you’re no longer tied to a dominant algorithm that promotes the most divisive posts or the biggest brands, and that’s Bluesky’s mandate.”