Bluesky, the upstart social media platform, hit the important milestone of 25 million users early Friday morning.
The site continues to profit from people looking for an alternative to X, formerly known as Twitter, with Bluesky achieving phenomenal growth since Election Day. According to a Nov. 13 post by Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, the site had 6 million users in late August, nearly 11 million in late October and hit 15 million users on Nov. 15. It added another 5 million users in just five days, hitting 20 million users by Nov. 19.
User growth has slowed a little in recent weeks. Rivals such as Meta-owned Threads have cloned some of the more popular Bluesky features. But Bluesky has continued its upward trajectory mainly at the expense of X. Social media users have been ditching Elon Musk-owned X as the site is seemingly drowning in bots, extreme content, crypto scams, ads, pornography, racism, transphobia and misinformation.
Helping Bluesky establish itself as a viable and legitimate social media platform has been the rush of media groups, organizations, companies, sports teams and celebrities creating accounts over the last month.
Bluesky launched as an invite-only social media platform in February 2023. The site opened itself fully to the public in February this year and has hummed along until the back half of 2024, with the presidential election, and the ensuing toxicity on X, turbocharging signups. Bluesky was originally founded by then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in 2019. Dorsey parted ways with Bluesky in 2022.