I led Twitter’s content strategy. Bluesky could be the new X.

• Users and brands such as former CNN anchor Don Lemon and The Guardian have left X.
• Gordon MacMillan, former head of content strategy at Twitter, says Bluesky is most like the old Twitter.
• He told Business Insider that it’s still difficult for people and companies to leave X.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Gordon MacMillan, formerly head of content strategy at Twitter. He spent more than 10 years with the company and left the company in March 2023, four months before it was renamed X. Business Insider has confirmed his identity and previous employment. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I led a corporate marketing team in EMEA and our job was mainly to sell Twitter to the industry. Our audience was the major media agencies, brands and advertisers. I worked with the sales team to promote the platform and show brands why they should choose Twitter over Facebook or Instagram.

The changes that occurred after Elon Musk acquired the platform have been well documented, including one of his early moves to reactivate banned accounts of various individuals, President Donald Trump being one.

Under Musk’s banner of free speech, there was a gradual shift in content strategy and the kinds of characters that might be attracted to it. There’s been a lot of talk about algorithms being tweaked, and Musk’s posts are appearing at the top of feeds, so I think the changes have felt political.

After the US election, many people have talked about how X has essentially become a political tool for Musk to support his ideas compared to how the platform was before. Before he took over, it had no other attitude than if you broke the rules, you would be banned. But now it feels more like anything will go, especially since a lot of people in the moderation, trust and security teams have either been fired or left on their own.

There has been a rate of users leaving X recently. I think a lot of people left last October as a result of an increase in anti-Semitic conversations after Hamas’ attacks on Israel. Then again, after Musk said civil war in Britain was inevitable. I think that pushed another group of people over to go too.

Big departures feel like the beginning of the end

A lot of people seemed to be moving over to Threads and Bluesky in the run-up to the US election, as X looked set to become a vehicle for Musk to help promote the Trump campaign. He put tens of millions of dollars behind Trump’s campaign and used X to influence the campaign and amplify Trump’s vote.

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It seems that not much has been done to control the spread of misinformation on X. After the election was called, I think this was the final straw for many people, along with the increase in hate speech and misinformation, which has been a concern for both individuals and brands. They are concerned about fire safety and that their content is associated with a swamp of hate or lies.

With The Guardian and media figures like Don Lemon announcing their departures from X this week, it feels like the beginning of the end for the platform as a go-to place for news. The Guardian has taken the initial lead, but I think other news organizations that think seriously about journalistic ethics and standards may also question whether it is still right for them to be there anymore. They could also stream to Bluesky or Threads.

Bluesky feels familiar to Twitter users

Bluesky, I think, is more like the old Twitter and feels more familiar than Threads, which doesn’t have Twitter-like lists and can be difficult to organize content on. Bluesky seems to attract official organizations and feels like a place where brands can migrate. It also has some Twitter heritage, as it was born out of an internal project and launched by its co-founder, Jack Dorsey. In that respect, it could easily be in a good position to claim it.

BlueSky said this week it crossed 15 million users, and on Thursday it said a million people joined the platform in one day alone. It’s seeing phenomenal growth, and there’s a wave of excitement for the platform fueled by the exodus from X.

Meta and Mark Zuckerberg clearly saw an opportunity to launch Threads when they saw the mess Twitter was becoming after the acquisition. They’ve tweaked threads and made improvements, but Bluesky feels more familiar, even beyond the use of the color blue.

It’s still hard for people to leave X

There are clearly a lot of people still using X because it’s hard to say goodbye to the networks they may have spent years building an audience on and using as a platform to make ads. It may be difficult for organizations or even individuals to rebuild audiences on another platform, but I think people will continue to drift away.

I think there may be other moments that will come in the next few months and years or so as Musk continues on this Trump journey that will alienate an increasing number of people.

Ever since Musk’s acquisition, the platform has had a problem with advertisers. Can Brands Come Back? Anything is possible, but it’s really not an environment for those with hate speech on the platform.

Unless something fundamental changes, like Musk stepping away or drawing a line in the sand to sort out these issues that advertisers are concerned about, it’s hard to see them coming back or choosing X over other platforms when it’s in the state it is in.

It feels like BlueSky and Threads have a much better environment.

X did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.