Bluesky feels like the big winner right now. The platform has always had promise, especially with features like feeds with custom algorithms and the ability to let users pick their own moderation filters. But for a long while, it didn’t have the critical mass of users that I could follow to make it the first social network I load up every day.
Over the course of this month, that’s changed. It added 700,000 new users in a week. Then, it crossed the 15 million-user mark. This week, CEO Jay Graber said it crossed more than 20 million users and had been adding more than a million users per day.
Part of the interest in Bluesky is that it looks and feels like a better version of Twitter. But with Bluesky, it also feels like you can control your experience in the app. That isn’t always the case with Threads, where Meta makes the rules about what shows up in the algorithmic feed that it constantly pushes at you.
Things haven’t been perfect for Bluesky; the platform has had some hiccups, seemingly due to the influx of people, and one major outage due to a cut fiber cable. But Meta has clearly been feeling the heat.
Last week, the day after Bluesky touted its 15 million total users, Threads boss Adam Mosseri shared that Threads had already surpassed 15 million signups for November alone. (CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently shared that the platform has 275 million monthly users.) And Meta has aggressively introduced some significant Threads changes, including its own version of custom feeds, a major change to make the For You feed show more from people you follow, and some big improvements to search.
Even if Bluesky is my preferred place right now, it’s still comparatively small to Threads and X. It’s unclear if people will stick with it over the long term, especially since Meta seems committed to making Threads its next billion-user social network. And X is still going to matter, given that many companies post updates on the platform and because owner Elon Musk is set to have enormous power in the Trump administration.
I don’t think any of the platforms will fully replicate what Twitter once was — people are just too scattered across different platforms now — but Bluesky seems to have a real shot at becoming the next big place to get the pulse of the internet. I look forward to the skeets.