The social media service Bluesky says it has been gaining millions of users since the U.S. presidential election. Usage data shows Bluesky reached 20 million users this week. That was up from about 12 million users just one month ago.
Bluesky is seen as a major competitor to social networking service X, formerly Twitter. American businessman Elon Musk bought Twitter in October 2022 and changed the name to X.
Musk made a series of changes to X shortly after taking over. These included greatly reducing the number of employees, as well as removing some existing restrictions on user content. Many of the released workers were responsible for monitoring the service to identify banned material or account violations.
Musk has described the changes as an effort to protect the free speech of users. But his critics have noted that removing content restrictions had resulted in more harmful content and hate speech appearing on X.
Some industry experts also see the recent rise in Bluesky users as a possible reaction to the changes under Musk’s leadership at X.
What is Bluesky?
Bluesky was started by the former head of Twitter, Jack Dorsey. He created it in 2019 as an internal project at Twitter. It started as an invitation only service, or platform. But after further development efforts, it was opened up to all users last February.
Bluesky operates similarly to X and Twitter. It offers a feed of accounts that users follow. Users can send direct messages and lock certain posts at the top of a user’s feed. Bluesky also offers pre-chosen “starter packs” to help new users decide which individuals and organizations to follow.
Why is Bluesky growing?
Bluesky announced in mid-November that its total users had reached 15 million from 13 million at the end of October. The rate of new users has continued to grow during the past few weeks.
But the latest post-election increase was not the first time Bluesky has gained from people leaving X. In the week after X was banned in Brazil in August, Bluesky said it added about 2.6 million users – 85 percent of them from Brazil. And during one day in October, about 500,000 new users signed up for Bluesky after X warned that blocked accounts would be able to see a user’s public messages.
Many new users – including reporters, left-leaning politicians and celebrities – have shared messages or created memes to explain their decisions for leaving X for Bluesky. Some expressed that they saw Bluesky as similar to an early version of Twitter.
Several well-known organizations and individuals recently announced they were leaving X because of concerns about changes to that service. These included the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate, British news publisher The Guardian and former CNN news presenter Don Lemon.
Even with Bluesky’s growth, X issued a statement after the U.S. presidential election saying it had “dominated the global conversation on the U.S. election” and had set new records.
Beyond social networking
Even though Bluesky currently operates much like X, company leaders have said they plan to expand in new directions, The Associated Press reports. For example, Bluesky says it is seeking to build a new technical foundation it describes as “a protocol for public conversation.”
That system is designed to make social networks work across different platforms such as email, internet blogs or phone numbers. Currently, users cannot cross between social platforms to leave a comment on someone’s account. X users must stay on X, TikTok users must stay on TikTok, etc.
Industry experts say this design is what big technology companies wanted – to build out multiple product offerings around their online properties. Such systems support the advertising-driven business models of tech companies.
Bluesky has said it is trying to reimagine this kind of system on its path toward “interoperability” with other platforms.
I’m Bryan Lynn.
Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on reports from The Associated Press, Reuters and Bluesky.
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Words in This Story
monitor – v. to watch something very carefully
celebrity – n. a famous person
dominate – v. to have control over a place or person
conversation – n. a talk between two or more people that is generally informal
meme – n. an idea, image, video, etc. that spreads very quickly on the internet
protocol – n. a set of rules covering something, often involving a very formal event
interoperable – adj. the ability of something to work well with other things around it