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Jan 21, 2025
Bluesky is booming. The platform grew by roughly 13 million users from September to November 2024 — that’s 12 new users every second. X, on the other hand, recorded a loss of 23 million users from April to September — that’s almost as much as Bluesky’s entire user base.
No doubt, there’s a lot of hype around Bluesky now, but will it live up to it?
Here’s CNET’s opinion:
Bluesky may be surging, but the site has a way to go to catch competing sites. Forbes reports that X has 588 million global users as of September, a drop from 611 million in April. Threads, Meta’s competitor to X, has more than 275 million daily users.
Bluesky is still in its infancy and its future is still rather unclear. It could either become its own thing and be more of a niche alternative — just like Meta’s Threads or Mastodon, or it may pull off a complete takeover — just like what Facebook did with MySpace back in the day.
To help you form your own opinion, I dove deep into both platforms. I’ll walk you through their histories, UIs, and technicalities to show you where these two social networks are similar, where they differ, and where they outdo each other.
To better understand what these two platforms are all about, let’s see how they got here in the first place. I’ll walk you through a brief timeline of both X and Bluesky — from their inception all the way to the present day.
Twitter was co-founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, also the creator and now ex-board member of Bluesky. Dorsey originally envisioned Twitter as a twist to SMS-based messaging — he wanted to give people a place where they could catch up with each other via status updates.
Twitter blew up in popularity by 2007, but new users didn’t use the platform exactly as intended — they instead used it in their own ways, which directly contributed to the social network’s evolution.
Twitter caught up with users and implemented new features to meet their demands. Here are some of the platform’s key milestones:
Elon Musk first hit the headlines when he proposed to acquire Twitter for $43.4 billion in April 2022. The deal closed at $44 billion in October of the same year and Musk made his first Tweet from the role of Twitter’s new CEO.
The following month, the platform introduced the Twitter Blue Subscription package. In July 2023, Twitter officially rebranded into X. In the same year, the platform experienced its first negative growth in user numbers — it lost nearly 4% of its total active users.
Bluesky was initially kicked off by Jack Dorsey in 2019, as an internal Twitter project.
The project aimed to turn Twitter into a decentralized social network — where users have more control over their online identity and the content they see.
Jack Dorsey explained that Twitter’s centralized model created difficulties in large-scale content moderation, while its algorithms incentivized controversial topics — factors that led to potentially toxic environments.
Thread by Jack Dorsey on December 11, 2019
Bluesky’s development first revolved around AT Protocol — an open-source framework that creates federated social ecosystems. These decentralized ecosystems can be controlled and moderated by the users themselves.
Elon Musk’s takeover further accelerated AT Protocol’s development and Bluesky’s team eventually formed a completely independent company to create a fully-fledged social network. Bluesky Social was founded in 2022, with CEO Jay Graber being the head of the company.
The Bluesky social network launched as an invite-only service in February 2023, then fully opened to the public the following year. It gained popularity ever since, with a sudden surge post-US elections, reaching 20 million members in late November 2024.
Jack Dorsey stepped down from the company’s board in May 2024.
Although both platforms feel rather similar at first glance, there are huge differences between the two — namely in their core architecture. X is centralized, while Bluesky is not. This factor alone involves loads of other details.
But before we dive into them, here’s a brief comparison table:
| Bluesky | ||
|---|---|---|
| Platform architecture | Centralized proprietary system | De-centralized open-source framework |
| Account verification | Via verification badges | Via domain name handles |
| Character limit per post | 280 | 300 |
| Content moderation | Primarily centralized | Community-driven |
| Built-in analytics | Yes | No |
This is where the platforms are in stark contrast. X is a centralized network, like most other major social platforms. That means X has full control over user data and its algorithms.
For example, these algorithms curate the content in your For You feed. They use data like a user’s previous interactions and browsing behavior to show a personalized feed of posts the algorithms deem most relevant — users have little to no actual control over the content that shows up in the For You feed.
X is also a proprietary system — it gets to decide whether to let third-party developers build upon the platform, what applications to build, and how to build them. Case in point, here are some news from late October 2024:
X has increased the price of its API access once again, which will make it even harder for third-party platforms to justify their X data access. – Social Media Today
Bluesky, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. It’s a decentralized platform, so users can set up their own servers — think Discord. The Bluesky company doesn’t fully own user data.
Instead, data is distributed among user-controlled servers, giving Bluesky users more control over their data and what the company can do with it. This also opens up room for account portability — another stand-out.
You can seamlessly transfer your Bluesky account’s data (posts, friends, followers, and so on), to any other AT Protocol-based app, like a Mastodon server — without having to start over from scratch — just like changing email service providers while keeping all your data intact, for example.
And since Bluesky is open-source, third-party developers can access the code to build new functionalities on top of it — just like WordPress plug-ins, for example.
This is where the platforms are not so different.
Twitter vs Bluesky’s navigation menus
Both X and Bluesky follow the same layout. You have your main navigation menu items on the left-hand side of the screen, the option to select between feeds via the buttons in the center, and the search bar in the top-right.
I personally feel like Bluesky’s layout is a bit cleaner. It’s not as busy while the smaller sizing of design elements gives the UI slightly more breathing room.
Interacting with content on both platforms is more or less the same — liking, sharing, and leaving comments are just a matter of clicking on the designated icons under each post. Unlike X, however, Bluesky doesn’t display a post’s total view count.
The same idea applies to drafting posts.
Although the layout is identical, Bluesky lacks some of X’s features here — you can’t schedule posts, create polls, or access unsent drafts. But Bluesky has a slightly larger character limit per post — 300, compared to Twitter’s 280 characters.
Plus, Bluesky allows for custom feeds — this is where the decentralized model really starts to show.
This lets you pick between loads of native and community-made feeds — each driven by separate algorithms and covering a specific content category. You can also pin them on your homepage.
For example, here’s what my homepage looks like now:
Bluesky interface highlighting tabs like “News,” “Art,” and “Quiet Posters”
The Discover and Following feeds are set by default — just like X’s For You and Following tabs. But I added extra feeds dedicated to news, arts, and quiet posters (accounts that don’t post often). Each feed only displays content specific to its category.
Feeds made by the online community are created via third-party apps like SkyFeed, for example.
SkyFeed Builder interface
You can create fully customized feeds that pull in posts containing specific keywords and links, which are also handy for social media listening.
X’s user base was at 588 million active users as of September 2024 — a 23-million drop from April the same year.
Bluesky hit 20 million users on November 20th, 2024 — a 7 million increase from October. Despite Bluesky’s rapid growth, the platform’s user base is still tiny compared to X and Meta’s Threads, which sits at 275 million users.
Even if a large portion of Bluesky’s traffic comes from X — 64.6% — there are still notable differences in the platforms’ demographics.
Bluesky’s demographics
Bluesky’s main traffic source comes from users aged 18-24 — 42.14% — almost 14% more than X. As for geography, most of Bluesky’s traffic comes from Brazil — 37.7% — where X was briefly unavailable until October 2024.
As for the top 10 followed accounts, Bluesky is mainly comprised of news websites and independent journalists, with a few actors, and a political figure hitting the top spot. In contrast, a good portion of X’s top accounts are made up of political figures, but the leaderboard primarily includes music artists.
Either way, X’s larger focus on politics could explain why Bluesky mostly attracts younger users.
Since Bluesky was initially built on top of the old Twitter model, both platforms focus on similar content formats — short text-based posts, usually accompanied by visuals. Of course, Bluesky’s overall activity levels are much lower since X has a lot more users.
But link-sharing on Bluesky tends to generate significantly more engagement than on X.
For example, here’s a post from The New York Times on X:
New York Times tweet reporting Bitcoin surpassing $100K
And here’s the same post, but on Bluesky:
New York Times post on Bluesky announcing Bitcoin’s milestone
The content was published on both platforms at the same time, but Bluesky generates almost double the interactions across the board.
And the super interesting part: The New York Times has 776.7k followers on Bluesky — but 55.3 million on X.
The difference in engagement levels is because X likely limits reach for posts with links to keep users active on the platform.
Despite that, a neat feature I found on Bluesky is the ability to play YouTube videos in context:
In contrast, clicking on a YouTube video on X opens up a separate YouTube tab.
Bluesky’s moderation strategies rely on a combination of dedicated content moderation teams, automated systems, and active community involvement. For example, the platform’s report-and-review system lets Bluesky users report content violating community guidelines.
From there, dedicated moderators evaluate each report and take action whenever needed. This system is further bolstered by automated algorithms that detect potentially harmful content. Bluesky also offers a solid set of filters to prevent unwanted content from showing up in your feed.
The platform’s moderation lists are a stand-out — users can create lists of blocked and muted accounts and share them across the Bluesky community. You can also mute posts containing specific keywords and tags.
X’s moderation is more centralized, but it also supports active user involvement via Community Notes, for example.
Plus, X users can report content that specifically violates guidelines under the EU Digital Services Act — not possible in Bluesky.
As for content muting, X follows a similar format to Bluesky but lacks its moderation lists.
Bluesky and X are completely different in this regard. I’m sure you’re familiar with X’s blue checkmark.
Verifying your X account is super straightforward. You first need an active Premium subscription and have your phone number confirmed, while your account must also fulfill the platform’s Authentic, Notable, Active policy. After that, simply submit a profile verification request under your account settings, and that’s it.
Verifying your Bluesky account, on the other hand, is not so simple.
Bluesky has no verification badges whatsoever. Instead, your account must be tied to a domain you already own — if you don’t have one, you can purchase and manage custom Namecheap domains directly within Bluesky (pricing varies significantly). A normal account ends with a “.bsky.social” handle.
Although more secure and not a problem for large-scale organizations and social media personalities, the domain-based verification process does require smaller influencers to go through a few extra hoops.
Plus, the lack of a visible badge makes it harder for users to distinguish between official and impostor accounts — which can become a bigger issue, especially as the platform grows in popularity. Still, Bluesky uses domain-based handles for a reason — the AT Protocol.
In short, you can use the same external domain as your handle across all the other social networks built via the AT Protocol — no need for any separate usernames. This is also where the platform’s account portability comes in.
X’s business model is pretty well-structured — the platform generates revenue from advertisements, premium subscription plans, and API packages. Although not ideal, as X puts specific features behind a paywall, the monetization model likely won’t change in the feature.
This is not the case with Bluesky. The platform currently doesn’t have a clear monetization model, but a subscription-based service is currently in talks.
“Subscriptions are the first step,” Graber said, referring to a plan to have users pay a regular fee for the ability to upload higher-quality video, for example, or access certain customization features. – Wired
CEO Jay Graber is also considering advertising, despite Bluesky’s initial promise to keep the platform completely ad-free. Still, these advertisements wouldn’t disrupt the core user experience.
It’s also worth noting that Bluesky is primarily funded by venture capital. That means any future plans may be subject to change to meet investor demand.
Bluesky’s growth won’t stop anytime soon, while the platform’s team is actively implementing new features like trending topics and bookmarks, for example.
Meanwhile, X’s political bias will likely cause it to lose a bigger chunk of users who share different views. These users may flock to Bluesky. Still, X as a platform has a loyal following — making the chance of a complete collapse pretty slim.
And although it has potential, Bluesky still has a long way to go until it can really pose a challenge to its competitor.
Bluesky experienced a massive surge post-US elections. It’s pretty safe to say that differences in opinions are a huge factor in the platform’s growth. Bluesky’s initial invite-only period also played a major role in generating hype around the platform.
Plus, it seems like Bluesky successfully fills in most of X’s gaps — gaps a large chunk of X’s user base is vocal about.
Bluesky’s decentralized nature is in stark contrast to X’s centralized and arguably biased algorithms, while its open-source framework reminds people of how Twitter used to be, before Musk’s takeover and the latest API restrictions.
In other words, users most likely flock to Bluesky because the platform is similar to Twitter before its rebranding, yet it also manages to bring more to the table.
People are flocking to Bluesky because the platform is similar to Twitter before the rebranding. Since Twitter rebranded into X, the platform has experienced numerous changes in its algorithms and business model — changes a large portion of the user base doesn’t agree with.
No. X and Bluesky are two completely different entities. X is owned by Elon Musk, while Jay Graber is the head of Bluesky. Still, both platforms do have the same roots — Bluesky was initially started as an internal Twitter project by Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter and ex-board member of Bluesky.
Yes, Bluesky’s user base has reached 24.5 million users since its 2022 beta release, making it a resounding success. However, its user base is still rather small compared to X’s 588 million users.
Simply head over to bsky.app, click on Sign Up, and fill in all the necessary details.
Yes. The platform’s decentralized model and emphasis on giving users more control over its algorithms really feel like a breath of fresh air in the social media space.
Yes, you can create a Bluesky account completely for free. But the platform will also include paid subscription plans in the near future.
Digital marketing enthusiast, language nerd, and content writer. Horea loves writing about SaaS and anything that involves boosting online presence – from SEO to social media, web design, and more. His content is allergic to fluff and eats research for breakfast.
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