Bluesky added 2.5 million new users last week as it pushes to compete with the newly named X (previously Twitter). Bringing its total to over 16 million users. The move comes on the heels of Donald Trump's election as the US President. People have been fleeing X, ever since Trump’s win because of controversies and uncertainty concerning the direction of the platform.
Bluesky reported significantly increased engagement, saying it was on pace to sign up 1 million new users in one day. The site's growth in users is largely driven by those looking for an alternative to Musk-owned X, which continues to struggle with content moderation and technical issues.
On November 6 - the day when Trump's election results were confirmed, X recorded its highest number of US visitors at 46.5 million visits for the year. That sure is a record breaker of visitors, but the good traffic also has a flipside-over 115,000 users deactivated their accounts. That marked the biggest wave of account deactivations since Musk purchased the platform.
Bluesky saw 1.2 million website visits on the same day, outscoring Meta's Threads at about 950,000, SimilarWeb says. Twitter reports Bluesky remains less popular, its monthly active app users are superior to Threads by a margin of severalfold.
Some of the reasons why Bluesky gained more popularity are due to increased discontent with X, majorly caused by the controversial content and the walkout of prominent organizations and influencers. High-profile individuals, such as Don Lemon and the Center for Countering Digital Hate, have walked out of X following discontent over the platform's guidelines governing what should be kept off the network
Bludeau's success comes just as X is facing legal disputes in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas or state courts in Tarrant County. Critics have protested the move, citing that this cuts down on accountability and sends lawsuits to courts friendly to Elon Musk, furthering the platform's odious legal and ethical issues.
Bluesky and Threads are growing fast, but X still holds a lot of steam in the social media market with about 317 million active users on a monthly basis. According to analysts, the connection of X to Trump's thought is still one advantage that continues to be ahead of others even though users are running to other emerging platforms because they are not satisfied with the current state of X under Musk's leadership.