Bluesky, a social media microblogging app reminiscent of rivals X and Threads, welcomed 1.25 million new users to its platform in the week after the US election.
Some new users switched to Bluesky to boycott X over billionaire owner Elon Musk's loyalty to President-elect Donald Trump, according to a post on the app.
“It's scary how Elon Musk has turned Twitter into a Trump propaganda machine full of misinformation and misinformation,” one user said. Posted At Blue Sky, CNBC reported.
Bluesky's total user base has jumped to 15 million from about 13 million at the end of October, the company announced Wednesday.
“We're excited to welcome everyone looking for a better social media experience,” Jay Graeber, CEO of BlueSky, told CNBC in a statement.
Brusky did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Some X users praised the leak of leftist accounts.
“'Join me at Bluesky' is the new 'I'm moving to Canada,'” one user wrote.
The Seattle-based startup has seen an influx of users over the past week, but the platform still lags far behind its competitors.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in October that Instagram's new app, Threads, launched in July 2023, has about 275 million monthly users. Musk said in May that X had 600 monthly users. Market intelligence firm Sensor Tower estimated the platform had 318 million users as of October, according to CNBC.
In 2019, then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey praised the creation of Bluesky. This social media app started as a project within Twitter. The platform remained an invite-only space until it opened to the public in February of this year. Dorsey said in May that he is no longer a member of Bluesky's board of directors.
New Bluesky users will notice similarities to X's settings, including the “Discover” feed and the ability to send “direct messages” to other users.
This isn't the first time Bluesky has gained a ton of new users from X's woes. In September, Brazil's Supreme Court banned Musk's social media platforms for not complying with content moderation laws and for not appointing legal representation in Brazil. Brusky said 2 million new users flooded the company's platform after the ban was announced.
The new social media app even jokingly mocked Musk over his close relationship with Trump.
Musk, the world's richest man with a net worth of $303.2 billion, has donated millions of dollars to pro-Trump PACs, held solo rallies in battleground states on Trump's behalf, and is up for $1 million a day. It encouraged Americans to vote early.
Musk reportedly spent election night at President Trump's Mar-a-Lago mansion, the president-elect's granddaughter Kai Trump said. Acquired the status of “uncle”.
“I can assure you that no member of the Bluesky team will sit down with a presidential candidate tonight to give them direct access to control what they see online.” bluesky said In a post by X on November 5th.
Immediately after Mr. Trump won the election by a landslide, some members of the media said they were abandoning X.
The London-based left-wing newspaper The Guardian said it would no longer publish on Musk's platform, citing “far-right conspiracy theories and racism” about X, and announced it would move to Bluesky.
Don Lemon, the scandal-plagued former CNN anchor, said he plans to quit the app because of a new policy that all legal disputes will be heard in Texas courts. Lemon is currently suing Musk after he canceled his appearance on the X show.
