In the wake of the US election social network startup Bluesky has seen a massive surge in users, today it’s close to passing 20 million. Clearly, there is a mass defection underway from X to Bluesky with no sign of it slowing down anytime soon.
X is a wild ride under the command of Elon Musk with free speech its core value. There’s a lot of stuff on that platform that I unfortunately can’t un-see. Most people I’ve seen on Bluesky are looking for a left-leaning home to share their views as X becomes a place preferred by people on the right.
I have no intentions of leaving X but I’ve signed up with Bluesky because that’s my job as a tech reviewer. I should note that Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, is still on Elon Musk’s X after setting up Bluesky.
Curiously, Dorsey left Bluesky this year.
I will say that Bluesky looks just like Twitter before X and it’s a far better experience than Meta’s Threads. Threads started with promise but it’s too tightly woven into the Instagram universe to provide that ‘Twitter-like’ experience.
X has more than 500 million active monthly users so Bluesky has a long way to go but you’ve got to start somewhere. Last week the surge in signups really stressed Bluesky’s systems. On Friday it posted that over 1 million people signed up over the previous 24 hours. At the time of publishing this story, Bluesky had 19.8 million users.
I’ve all but given up on Threads but I’m sticking with X and Bluesky along with Instagram, Facebook, TikTok etc. When you add up all the other social media platforms one has to deal with in the course of a day’s work, it becomes tiresome.
We have a splintered social media universe which keeps as many people apart as it is supposed to bring together.
Social is broken and may never be fixed.