This influx of users can be attributed to two primary factors: the migration of individuals from a competing platform following the election of Donald Trump as U.S.
President and the potential legal complications arising from an upcoming change in the terms of service for the platform owned by Elon Musk. Bluesky is among several applications aiming to replace the aforementioned platform in the wake of Musk’s acquisition.
"We're seeing record-high activity levels across all different forms of engagement: likes, follows, new accounts, etc, and we're on track to add 1 million new users in one day alone," Bluesky said in a statement.
Numerous prominent organizations and individuals, such as the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate, the British news outlet the Guardian, and former CNN anchor Don Lemon, have announced their departure from X due to apprehensions regarding the platform's content and impending changes to its terms of service.
During the election, misinformation experts criticized X for its significant role in facilitating the dissemination of false information concerning key battleground states.
On November 6, following the news of Trump, an ally of Musk, winning the presidency, X experienced a surge, garnering 46.5 million visits in the U.S.—the highest daily traffic in the past year and 38% above the average for recent months, as reported by analytics firm SimilarWeb.
However, over 115,000 users in the U.S. chose to deactivate their X accounts, marking the highest number since Musk acquired the platform, according to SimilarWeb data.
In contrast, Bluesky's website saw approximately 1.2 million visitors on November 6, surpassing Meta Platforms' Threads, which attracted around 950,000 visitors. Nonetheless, the Threads app had a higher number of visitors compared to Bluesky.
"Outsized growth, particularly for Bluesky, may have been driven by a rise of controversial content or technical issues on competitor X," said Abraham Yousef, senior insights analyst at market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.
"The departure of popular accounts, media personalities, or organizations, may have led consumers to conclude that X is no longer their preferred platform, which could also be fueling growth on other platforms, particularly Bluesky and Threads."
TERMS CHANGE
The recent increase in Bluesky's popularity coincides with an upcoming modification to X's terms, effective Friday, which mandates that all legal disputes concerning the platform must be filed solely in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas or in state courts located in Tarrant County, Texas.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate expressed concerns on Thursday that this alteration may impede legal actions against the platform by directing future lawsuits to judges whom Musk perceives as favorable to his position.
"Now, the billionaire will be able to bring lawsuits to friendly courts against whoever disagrees with him on his platform," said the nonprofit that has faulted Musk for letting hate speech spread on X.
X and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
In comparison, Bluesky’s user base is significantly smaller than its competitors. According to Sensor Tower, Threads has approximately 252 million monthly active users on its mobile application, while X has approximately 317 million.
"X seems to be in a better position than it has in a while given the ability to represent the views of president-elect Trump," said D.A. Davidson & Co analyst Gil Luria.
"While there are other competing platforms, those may have a hard time catching up with X, since microblogging has significant network effects."