Bluesky is a social media platform that has quickly caught the attention of many as it competes with X, formerly known as Twitter, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk. CBS News reports that Bluesky was started as an internal project by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. As of 2021, the company has been an independent company with former software engineer Jay Graber as the CEO, who had been involved in the decentralized web movement before joining the company, according to Newsweek. Graber recently posted, stating that the company gains 10,000 users every 10 to 15 minutes.
Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it to X in 2023. According to NBC News, Musk changed the name of the platform to “embody the imperfections in us all that make us unique.” According to CNN, Musk said when he acquired the platform, the goal was for it to be a digital town square that was “politically neutral.” However, Musk quickly brought many controversial changes regarding politics to the platform, even before he started supporting Donald Trump and his “Make America Great Again” campaign. X was the first platform to restore Trump’s social media account after many platforms banned him following a U.S. Capitol raid that occurred on January 6, 2021. CNN reports that leading up to the 2024 presidential election, Musk also began to spread claims that were misleading and false about Kamala Harris, who was competing with Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Reportedly, the platform also started displaying political and content endorsing Trump to users, without any user preference. After the election, Musk was one of two tabbed by Trump to lead his “Department of Government Efficiency,” a new department created by Trump.
NPR reports that the day after the U.S. presidential election, over 115,000 people deactivated their accounts on the platform owned by Musk, which was reported as the largest mass exit from X. Politics are not the only place where Musk has made costing decisions. Since his takeover of the platform, over 80% of employees have been fired, and an added fee for “Twitter Blue” now allows users to amplify the reach their posts have. Conversely, data provided by Similarweb shows that since Election Day, usage of Bluesky has skyrocketed to over 500% in the U.S. Even though Bluesky is emerging as a competitor to X, it is still considered a small social media platform with 20 million users, compared to the hundreds of millions of users on X and Threads by Meta, and the billions of users on TikTok and Instagram.
While Bluesky started as “a Twitter clone,” Forbes states, the features are quite different compared to X. Forbes reports that Bluesky is federated, which means that users have the ability to own and operate servers, instead of relying on the official servers owned by the platform. Other features include users having the ability to switch servers at any time, without changing information, such as their username, timeline, or friends lists. According to Forbes, many celebrities have moved to Bluesky as it emerges, including famous actor Mark Hamill, musician “Weird Al” Yankovic, activist George Takei, and filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. However, celebrities are not the only people who are leaving X for Bluesky, as many journalists have made the move to the rising platform. According to CNN, notable journalists include Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic, Mara Gay of The New York Times, and Don Lemon, a former CNN anchor.
According to Forbes, while Bluesky continues to gain popularity, reaching the level of X would be very difficult, as it took years for it to get to where it is today. Bluesky is still a long way from building up the culture that X built, and it is not guaranteed that a social media platform will be as influencing as X in the future.
