Bluesky’s user base has doubled in the past 90 days. Is it a mass exodus from X?

New York
CNN
—

X competitor Bluesky soared 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 moving out in the wake of his prominent 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.

The energy on X is markedly different: Musk spent months using the site to boost President-elect Donald Trump. In recent days, researchers have recorded increases in sexist language such as “your body, my choice” on the site. And that’s on top of previous changes by Musk, like cutting moderators, restoring banned accounts, allowing racist and Nazi accounts, and changing the platform’s verification system to boost anyone willing to pay for whatever they posted — all of which helped to the tank company’s core advertising business.

A number of prominent journalists therefore announced their exit from X to join Bluesky this week, including the Atlantic’s Charlie Warzelthe New York Times’ Mara Gay and former CNN anchor Don Lemon. The British newspaper The Guardian too said Wednesday that it will no longer post to X from its official channels, calling X “a toxic media platform,” though it did not specify what other platforms it plans to use to promote its work.

But while Bluesky might have A moment three years after launch, any claim that it will kill X should be taken with a grain of salt.

As a private company, X does not share user numbers. Recent third-party estimates of user trends are mixed, though the consistent user growth the platform enjoyed prior to Musk’s takeover appears to have improved in the past two years. But — for better and probably worse — the site has so far weathered the creation of several other competitors, the reinstatement of white supremacists, and the spread of racist conspiracy theories from Musk on down without fading into irrelevance.

“X consumption is at an all-time high and continues to rise,” X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a post Wednesday. “To all our users – of every interest, political party and viewpoint – you will always have a place to engage and participate in the global conversation freely and safely.”

More than 115,000 US X users deactivated their accounts the day after the election, the largest single-day exit since Musk took control of the platform, according to digital intelligence platform Similarweb. And that only included users who deactivated through the website, not the mobile app.

But X also had its highest web traffic that whole year same day, with 46.5 million visits on desktop alone, a 38% increase over the average of the previous few months, Similar web 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 about 800,000 in the previous days.

“Whether there will be a measurable drop in viewership for X as a result of policy remains to be seen,” said David Carr, Similarweb editor for insights, news and research, in a blog post Tuesday. But, he added, “X’s recent daily peak in US traffic doesn’t make up for the erosion in audience the service has seen over the past few years since Musk took ownership of the service.”

Sensor Tower, another market intelligence firm, found that daily active app users and time spent on X jumped on November 5 and 6 compared to the previous 30 days. But on November 10th there were X daily active users relatively flat compared to just before the election, whereas Bluesky saw a jump of 28% in users in the same period.

Still, X has far more users than Bluesky, Sensor Tower noted. (Bluesky also remains much smaller than Meta’s threads.)

A third app data analytics firm, Apptopia, also told CNN that activity on X increased significantly ahead of the election. That said, X’s daily active users peaked days later, on November 9, before falling slightly. On Bluesky, daily users more than doubled from mid-October to the week after the election.

Here’s the takeaway from all these numbers: X had a big jump in usage leading up to and on Election Day and the day after, but that appears to be slowing. At the same time, Bluesky saw a post-election surge that looks set to continue, although its overall user base is still relatively small.

Of course, lots of people flock to all kinds of media during and around an election week. And it’s worth remembering that we’ve seen plenty of users swear off X before in the wake of previous Musk incidents, only for many of them to come trickling back to the platform.

Still, anecdotally, some prominent social media users say they now see more engagement with their posts—what users on those sites typically value above all else—on Bluesky, despite having larger followings on X.

Ed Zitron, founder of the media company EZPR, told CNN that he and others have stayed on X “because there’s a critical mass of readers in there and there’s a virality to the content you post.”

But, Zitron said, “with how Bluesky is scaling right now, I don’t see how (X) will remain dominant,” adding that he has 90,000 followers on X, but “the actual engagement doesn’t seem to match.”

New York Times journalist Mike Isaac had a similar remark in a Bluesky post Tuesday: “really disorienting to go from twitter – where I make a post to 200,000 followers and get five favorites – to bluesky, where a post gets 200 favorites instantly.”

But here’s the thing: Even if X bled 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 to 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 follow suit. In the run-up to the election, Musk spread false and misleading claims about Trump’s competitor, Vice President Kamala Harris. The platform too allegedly pushed political and pro-Trump content on users, whether they wanted it or not.

Now X has become something of a hub for right-wing social media users.

And by using the platform as a megaphone to promote Trump, Musk may have reaped the kind of return he couldn’t even imagine when he bought Twitter for $44 billion two years ago: direct access to the US president.

Trump announced Tuesday night that Musk will take on an official role in his administration, becoming one of two people to lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” along with Vivek Ramaswamy. Musk also joined a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky immediately after the election, presumably to discuss the country’s war with Russia, where Musk’s Starlink has played a key role as a communications tool.

And Musk’s personal fortune also increased by $26.5 billion the day after the election, as investors hope his relationship with Trump will boost his companies’ fortunes.

That’s almost certainly worth a lot more than X’s declining ad revenue and any lost users in Musk’s mind.

—CNN’s Liam Reilly and Matt Egan contributed to this report.