In this photo illustration, the Bluesky Social logo is displayed on a mobile phone in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on September 4, 2024.
Mauro Pimentel | AFP | Getty Images
Microblogging startup Bluesky has gained more than 1.25 million new users in the past week, showing that some social media users are changing their habits after the US presidential election.
Bluesky’s influx of users shows that the app could be pitched as an alternative to Elon Musk-owned X (formerly Twitter). meta thread. The company announced Wednesday that the majority of new users are from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
“We’re excited to welcome everyone looking for a better social media experience,” Jay Graeber, CEO of BlueSky, told CNBC in a statement.
Despite the surge in users, Bluesky’s total base is still only a fraction of its rivals. The Seattle startup claims 15.2 million total users. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in October that Threads has about 275 million monthly users. Musk claimed in May that X had 600 million monthly users, but market intelligence firm Sensor Tower predicted that as of October, X had 318 million monthly users. .
Bluesky was founded as a project within Twitter in 2019 when Jack Dorsey was still CEO, but it doesn’t display ads and its business model hasn’t yet been developed. The company became an independent company in 2021. Dorsey said in May that he is no longer a member of Bluesky’s board of directors.
“Journalists, politicians, and news geeks are also talking about Bluesky as a better alternative to X than Threads,” Internet traffic monitoring service Similarweb wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.
Some users with new Bluesky accounts posted that they migrated to the service because of their support for Musk and President-elect Donald Trump.
“It’s scary how Elon Musk has turned Twitter into a Trump propaganda machine filled with misinformation and misinformation,” one user wrote on Blue Sky.
This is Bluesky’s second notable spike in recent months.
Blueski announced in September that 2 million new employees will be hired after Brazil’s Supreme Court suspended Company X in the country for failing to comply with regional content moderation policies and appointing local representatives. He said he had acquired users.
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