X competitor Bluesky rocketed to the No. 1 spot on the Apple App Store’s US chart this week, as many users of Elon Musk’s platform said they were decamping in the wake of his significant role in the US presidential election.
Bluesky’s user base has doubled in the past 90 days — on Tuesday the company said it had gained 1 million new sign-ups in the past week alone, bringing it to more than 15 million total users.
A number of prominent journalists announced their exit, accordingly, from X to join Bluesky this week, including the Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel, the New York Times’ Mara Gay and former CNN anchor Don Lemon. UK newspaper The Guardian also said Wednesday that it will no longer post to X from its official channels, calling X “a toxic media platform,” although it did not specify which other platforms it plans to use to promote its work.
But while Bluesky may be having A Moment three years after its launch, any claims that it will kill X should be taken with a grain of salt.
More than 115,000 US X users deactivated their accounts the day after the election, the largest single-day exit since Musk assumed control of the platform, according to digital intelligence platform Similarweb. And that included only users who deactivated through the website, not the mobile app.
But X also had its highest web traffic all year that same day, racking up 46.5 million visits on desktop alone, up 38% from the average of the preceding few months, Similarweb said. Bluesky also saw daily visits jump on Election Day and the day after to 1.2 million and 1.3 million, respectively, up from around 800,000 in the days before.
But here’s the thing: Even if X was hemorrhaging users to Bluesky, there’s no sign Musk would care enough to do anything.
Although Musk said when he acquired the platform that he wanted it to be a “politically neutral” digital town square, X took a sharp turn toward the right under his leadership, even before he began championing Trump and his MAGA movement. Musk made X the first mainstream social platform to restore Trump’s account after he was widely banned following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, prompting other platforms to do the same. In the run-up to the election, Musk spread false and misleading claims about Trump’s competitor, Vice President Kamala Harris. The platform also reportedly pushed political and pro-Trump content on users, whether they wanted it or not.
Now, X has become something of a hub for right-leaning social media users.
Read the full article by Clare Duffy here / Courtesy of CNN
