Bluesky's rise leads to a mass X-odus

Previously an invite-only platform, Bluesky – a social media platform resembling the Twitter of old – became open to public signups in February 2024. Since then, it has steadily grown its membership, with a recent influx following the 2024 US Presidential Election (over one million new joiners between 5 November and 14 November).

Bluesky was founded by former Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, but it is now headed by Jay Graber. With the latest new signups taken into account, it has an overall membership figure of approximately 19 million. This is still a long way off from X, and even from Meta’s Threads, which reported 275 million active monthly users in November, but the rate of growth recently is impressive – it has grown by about 4 million users in the past three days alone!

It’s interesting to see where these sign-ups are based too; October’s data showed the top 5 countries making up the platform’s user base were US (44.39%), Japan (6.92%), Brazil (4.12%), Germany (3.92%) and UK (3.14%). More recent data shows a change in this top 5 though, with the US now only accounting for 27.72% (still in first place though), and Brazil jumping up to second place with 21.03%. Brazil’s large increase is likely due to the country’s ban of X, although this has since been lifted.

Furthermore, something that will markedly differentiate user experience on this platform compared to X is that the Bluesky team “aim to replace the conventional ‘master algorithm’, controlled by a single company, with an open and diverse ‘marketplace of algorithms’”.

In the wake of Donald Trump winning the 2024 US Election, which was shortly followed by his appointment of X CEO Elon Musk to the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), many more X users have decided to jump ship from the platform.

A notable recent exit was the Guardian along with many other notable figures, such as journalists Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall of The News Agents podcast (and formerly the BBC), all of whom have joined Bluesky without leaving X.

Effectively, they are adding Bluesky as another tool at their disposal without disowning X outright.

Given that many influential figures like these have curated their X feeds and gained followers over the course of several years, it’s understandable that they are reluctant to leave it all behind.

On this point though, Bluesky has added a ‘Starter Pack’ feature, which creates a curated list of people and custom feeds to follow, allowing new users to find their communities much more quickly than they would otherwise be able to.

Over the past few months, certain clients of Empower have raised the question of whether it is worth them sticking with X. Given that Bluesky’s user count is still relatively low, it might be worth them at least reserving their ideal handle on the platform while it’s still up for grabs.

Other actions you can take are:

• Add a profile pic, bio, branding and links to your website at the minimum
• Consider posting 1-2 posts to let Bluesky users you’re now there and encourage new followers
• Look out for Starter Packs (lists) to find relevant users to follow
• Consider creating your own starter pack if there are multiple team members from your organisation with a presence on Bluesky

In fact, Empower has just signed up to Bluesky! If you find yourself signing up too – or perhaps you’re already there – then do give us a follow: @empoweragency.bsky.social