There’s no doubt that social media startup Bluesky is seeing massive growth in the weeks following the U.S. Presidential Elections. This comes alongside a 280,000-user exodus on X, formerly Twitter, as liberals seek a new home away from Elon Musk’s platform. But can Bluesky really go toe-to-tow with X?
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First off, let’s look at the numbers. Bluesky is sporting roughly 20 million users as of November 2024 with daily average users of about 3.5 million. Pinning down X’s user numbers is a little more difficult, but the company was estimated to have 318 million monthly active users as of October 2024. This shows that Bluesky has its work cut out for it if it wants to compete on the same level as X.
User Numbers Are Only Part of the Picture
While user counts matter, user growth is another key factor worth keeping an eye on. In Bluesky’s case, this has been tremendous, with its daily average users increasing nearly 300% since election day. On the flip side of that, X has reportedly been struggling to keep users around. Consider that Musk claimed X had 600 million monthly active users in May 2024, as compared to the latest estimate of 318 million.
X has bled users throughout 2024 after Elon Musk threw his support behind Trump in the 2024 election. Adding to that are new terms of service that went into effect last week. These focus on collecting users’ posts to train Musk’s Grok artificial intelligence (AI). Artists on the website weren’t happy about this change, resulting in many leaving X in favor of platforms that don’t allow AI training, Bluesky included.
What’s Next for Bluesky?
Beating X is still a lofty goal that may take Bluesky years to reach, if it ever does. What’s more important is to focus on how it performs against other social media platforms. One of its closest rivals right now is Meta Platforms’ (META) Threads. Those two are much closer in performance with Threads reporting only 1.5 times more daily active users than Bluesky. That’s despite it having a much larger user base of 275 million accounts.
If Bluesky can keep its momentum going, it will overtake Threads without an issue, and maybe in a few years, it will be chomping on X’s heels.
