On Sunday, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber vowed to retain the platform’s identity as a decentralized social network as it receives migrants from X, formerly Twitter.
Analysts claim that Bluesky may be the biggest winner of the social media upheaval that began when Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022. The world’s richest man renamed the social media site to X, transforming various functions and alienating loyal users.
Musk’s controversial and authoritarian management of his $44.00 billion acquisition pushed users toward alternatives. Bluesky and its advocacy for decentralization presented an appealing contrast to X, whose new owner exercised complete control.
Under Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s influence, the app was designed with an open protocol. This arrangement prevents any one company or a single group of people from monopolizing Bluesky’s power and decision-making.
On Friday, Graber reassured that the firm would never use or sell people’s post and activity data for generative AI GenAI training. This policy contrasts with X, Google, and Meta, which leverage their large user bases for their large language models.
In addition, the platform introduced new features, such as allowing users to create custom feeds and personalized moderation tools. The latter further diverges with X, which removed blocking and other control features, saying they hamper free speech.
Lastly, Bluesky encouraged independent developers to augment the social network by building on top of the app’s technology. It pledged to ensure that users could move freely while developers had the freedom to build.
X Keeps Losing Users to Bluesky After Trump Win
Over 116,000 people in the US deactivated their X accounts the day after the elections, moving to Bluesky and other alternatives. Analytics group Similarweb noted this as the most account terminations in a single day since Musk took over.
Bluesky’s daily active users (DAU) for iOS and Android accelerated by 75.00% the week following the elections. The fledgling social network hit 19.00 million users last week, up 58.33% from 12.00 million in mid-October.
Conversely, Musk-era X DAU peaked at 42.30 million on November 05, followed by 1.80 million deactivations in seven days. The platform had 611.00 million monthly active users in April and 586.00 million in September, a far cry from Musk’s 2024 target of 1.00 billion.
Similarweb predicts that Trump’s controversial cabinet picks will further drive X users to switch to Bluesky.
