The growth of Bluesky, a competitor to X, has slowed in the U.S. during December after seeing a significant increase from over 9 million users in September to over 20 million in November. Data from Similarweb indicates that Bluesky’s growth rate dropped to less than 10% month-over-month in December 2024, down from a 189% growth in November. The daily active users of Bluesky’s mobile app in the U.S. also experienced a slowdown, with a 12% increase in December following a 284% jump in November.
Currently, Bluesky has a total of 26.44 million users and has started incorporating features similar to those found on X, such as Trending Topics. The surge in Bluesky’s user base last year was partly due to users leaving X, particularly after the U.S. presidential election when Elon Musk’s support for Donald Trump and his use of X for political promotion led many to seek alternatives. This shift helped Bluesky climb to the top of the U.S. App Store charts in November, where it held the No. 1 spot for a week from November 13 to 21, 2024, as reported by Appfigures. The platform gained notable attention from celebrities and media professionals during this period.
However, recent data suggests that the rapid growth phase, or ‘Bluesky bump,’ has passed, and the platform’s expansion is now normalizing. Despite this, Bluesky continues to grow, outperforming another X competitor, Instagram Threads, in the U.S. in December with a 9.6% increase in both desktop and mobile web visits, while Threads saw a 1.6% decrease. Globally, Bluesky’s website visits grew by 9.5% month-over-month in December, surpassing Threads’ 5.7% and X’s 2.4% growth rates.
With its expanded user base, Bluesky is now facing challenges like user dissatisfaction with moderation policies, bot issues, and problems like username squatting and impersonation, which were addressed in a recent update. Despite the slowdown in December, Bluesky achieved a remarkable 930% year-over-year global growth in 2024, with an impressive two-year growth rate of 30,564% based on website visits.