Entertainment

Get to Know Bluesky, the New X Alternative with 18 Million Active Users

Published

2h ago

Nov 26, 2024 / 4116 Views

Evan Walker

For a time, logging onto social media meant lingering on one of five major platforms: Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter), TikTok, or Snapchat. But with political biases now dictating membership loyalties to these platforms, especially in the wake of the last American general elections, a new contender has entered the space: Bluesky.

It needs no reminding that the results of the most recent Presidential Run between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have proven to be one of the most divisive in the nation’s History, with the Republican nominee successfully securing his second term in office. While the wider geopolitical implications that this change in leadership would usher remain to be seen, a more immediate consequence has already begun to take shape by way of a mass migration of left-leaning digital denizens from the Elon Musk-owned X to a relatively nascent platform known as Bluesky.

What is Bluesky, the new X alternative with 18 million users?

That said, Bluesky isn’t exactly what we would call a fresh entrant by any means, especially considering how the company was established in 2019 as a research initiative by none other than Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey (who, if you remember, went on to endorse X later on). In the beginning, the platform’s membership was restricted through an invite-only system when it first launched its beta in February 2023. General public access followed a year later in February 2024, with software engineer Jay Graber now serving as the company’s CEO.

Dorsey has since distanced himself from any involvement in Bluesky since departing from its board in May 2024, while Twitter severed all ties with the project during Musk’s acquisition in 2022, granting it complete autonomy as an independent entity.

While it may be comparatively smaller in size when pitted against mainstream giants that contend in the same space, registrations for Bluesky have only been on the up and up since Polling Day, with SimilarWeb reporting that daily active users from iOS and Android for Bluesky shot up by 75% a week after the elections. That’s not much of a surprise given the controversial reputation that X has garnered since its rebrand from Twitter, especially with Elon Musk’s highly publicised involvement in the Republican presidential campaign attracting far-right membership. This is only further exacerbated by several contentious policy changes on X, chief of which being the ability for blocked users to view your posts. As of writing, Bluesky’s user count has surpassed 19 million.

Celebrities who are on Bluesky

Predictably, the large iNFLux of new users primarily consists of a more liberal-leaning audience who are hoping to seek refuge from the far-right activism that has been rife on X. Brazil leads the pack with the highest number of Bluesky app downloads in the wake of a nationwide court-ordered ban of X, followed closely by the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Spain. That process of assimilation is further bolstered by the similarities that Bluesky’s interface and key functionalities share with its parent company, making the transition fairly easy. ‘Retweets’ for example, are known as ‘re-skeets’ on Bluesky.

Owing to its left-leaning predilections, Bluesky has already attracted quite a sizeable Celebrity community. Some of the most notable names to have abandoned X for Bluesky include:

Lizzo
Barbra Streisand
Jamie Lee Curtis
Gabrielle Union
Quinta Brunson
James Gunn
Sean Gunn
John Cusack
Guillermo del Toro
Ben Stiller
Flavor Flav
Chuck D
Alex Winter
Carrie Coon
Scott Derrickson
George Takei
Mike Flanagan
Mike Shur
Mark Hamill
Stephen King
Alyssa Milano
Meredith Salenger
Patton Oswalt
Lilly Wachowski‬
Franklin Leonard
Tim Heidecker
Akilah Hughes
Yvette Nicole Brown
Andy Richter
Weird Al Yankovic
Gary Whitta
Titus Welliver
Paul F. Tompkins
Jon Cryer
Ed Solomon
Craig Mazin
Jenni Konner
Jeri Ryan
Ken Jennings
Gale Ann Hurd
Armando Iannucci
BenDavid Grabinski
Marc Bernardin
Duncan Jones
Miranda Cosgrove
Emily V. Gordon
Kumail Nanjiani
Michael Sheen
Bill Lawrence
Matthew Lillard
Busy Philipps
Dionne Warwick
Colson Whitehead
Paul Scheer
Bradley Whitford
Mara Wilson
Kashana Cauley
Megan Amram
Brian Duffield
Robert Kirkman
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Rian Johnson
Matt Reeves
Edgar Wright
Christopher Miller
Phil Lord
Rob Delaney
Ryan Reynolds

That isn’t the case with commercial brands however, who have yet to migrate en masse Bluesky largely given the fact that the platform’s key Business model isn’t reliant on ad revenue to turn a profit. With an emphasis on handing users the key to how they interact with their content on Bluesky, there is no specific algorithm that governs what appears on every person’s feed, making it less appealing of a marketing avenue, at least for the time being.

But some media outlets are steadily making their transition over to Bluesky, with The Washington Post, The Guardian, and Bloomberg being the biggest names to lead the charge into uncharted territory.

How to register for an account on the Bluesky app?

If you’re keen to give Bluesky a try for yourself, signing up is a breeze. Simply head over to the official Bluesky website through here, and click on ‘sign up’. You will then be directed to their registration page, which is pretty self-explanatory aside from the addition of one unique field – the hosting provider section.

While most garden-variety users can opt to get Bluesky to host their data by default, developers with the necessary know-how can choose to direct that data to their own dedicated servers instead. After this, select your user handle of choice and complete the CAPTCHA to finalise your Bluesky account.

Is ‘skeeting’ about to become the next dictionary word du jour? Check back in six months to find out.

(Feature and Hero Image credits: Mario Tama via Getty Images, Hakan Nural/Anadolu via Getty Images)

This story first appeared on Lifestyle Asia Hong Kong