Especially in the light of recent elections and with President elect Donald Trump preparing to return to the Oval Office, the decentralized social networking site known as Bluesky has gained a lot of new users. This political development has also reinforced the already complex position of Elon Musk in the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, abbreviated as DOGE as in DOGE coin and not dog-eat-dog society. As the owner of X, the app which used to be called Twitter, Musk has aligned with Trump, a situation that seems to have driven the users to two platforms- Twitter and Bluesky, alternatively.
Musk came back to reclaim Twitter towards late-last year, which he rebranded to X, leading to the birth of numerous social media sites which compete for the outlets that short text messaging service offers. By having removed restrictions on content that could be posted on X, this however polarized the users. Some left the platform while most became active on X. Nonetheless, these alternatives never took off—up until this moment, We-Musk, with Trump’s second term administration around the corner, a large proportion of traffic to the app has shifted to Bluesky. Late last week alone, the app underwent a massive onslaught of registrations, suggesting that there is a developing development of the digital space.
Blue Sky purposefully jumped into the public domain in February 2024. It creates a new social networking experience, one that is less dictated to the users and more so enabled for developers. The application retains the general interface and operation to that of X but sets itself apart through its open-for-all and pro-user stance. As per the communication officer (spokesperson) Emily Liu, Bluesky was built as a counter to the ‘walled gardens’ that so-called social networks have become. The intention was to give users what is rightly theirs: ownership of their data, freedom to developers and a place for creators where there are no walls. Liu stressed that the contributing factors to its increased acceptance include the platform’s functionalities differentiating it from others, thus making it possible for Bluesky to compete favorably with other social networks.
There is also interest in the question of who owns the Blue Sky. Its Chief Executive Officer Jay Graber is one of the co-owners of this platform. Also, he has an interesting board that comprises Jeremie Miller the inventor of Jabber, Mike Masnick founder of Techdirt and Kinjal Shah the general partner of Blockchain Capital. The history of the company is that it goes back to 2019 when the then chief executive officer of Twitter Jack Dorsey conceived it. However, the development left Twitter at the end of the year 2022 creating conditions for its external expansion.
The recent increase in the popularity of the system is remarkable. In the past week, about 2.5 million new users signed up for Bluesky, taking its total user count to above sixteen million. Liu disclosed that engagement metrics such as likes, follows, and activity of users on the Bluesky platform are hitting unprecedented highs. She further pointed out that many users have reported a better experience on Bluesky as compared to other platforms, even where they have more followers elsewhere. Making the most significant point, Liu said that users see the platform as fun and engaging, and such a factor can only help grow it even more.
In the meantime, even X has had its peaks of erratic movements, especially during the time of elections. The Daily that was shared by XData mentions that on Election Day and the day after, the platform was able to notice over nine hundred and forty-two (942) million posts globally and a fifteen-point five percent (15.5%) increment in new users signed up for the platform. However, this rise in activity was also met with more than one hundred fifteen thousand (115,000) account closures, the largest in volume since Musk took charge of the company. Some prominent individuals such as Jamie Lee Curtis and Don Lemon have also resigned from X, reminding users how contentious the issue of Musk’s reign and the social media space has become.
The growth of Bluesky appears to undergo certain aligned transformations in relation to how individuals have been behaving and what they prefer in regard to user content following the political and technological alterations. Thanks to its decentralized design and user-centric approach, it looks like Bluesky is prepared to take on X and other competitors in the growing social media market. Only time will tell if that expansion will be lasting or if it will constitute only a brief upturn in the history of the application but for the time being, many are taking notice of Bluesky’s resurgence.
