X-rival Bluesky gains 1.25 million users after the US election

Microblogging startup Bluesky added over 1.25 million new users last week, suggesting that some social media users are changing their habits following the US presidential election.

The influx of Bluesky users underscores how the app has managed to position itself as an alternative to competitor X, owned by Elon Musk Metas Topics. The majority of the new users come from the USA, Canada and the United Kingdom, the company announced on Wednesday.

“We’re excited to welcome everyone looking for a better social media experience,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber said in a statement to CNBC.

Despite the increase in user numbers, Bluesky’s overall base is still only a fraction of its competitors. The Seattle startup claims to have a total of 15.2 million users. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in October that Threads had nearly 275 million monthly users. Musk claimed in May that X had 600 million monthly users, but market research firm Sensor Tower put the monthly base at

“Journalists, politicians and news junkies have also touted Bluesky as a better X alternative than Threads,” Similarweb, the Internet traffic and monitoring service, wrote in a blog on Tuesday.

Some users with new Bluesky accounts said they switched to the service because of Musk and his support for President-elect Donald Trump.

“It’s appalling that Elon Musk has turned Twitter into a Trump propaganda machine full of disinformation and misinformation,” one user wrote on Bluesky.

This is Bluesky’s second notable rise in recent months.

Bluesky said it added two million new users in September after Brazil’s Supreme Court suspended X in the country for failing to comply with regional content moderation guidelines and for failing to appoint a local representative.

Regard: Cramer’s Mad Dash: Alphabet and Meta.