Bluesky saw a substantial surge in users, nearly reaching 800,000 “newskies,” as the app transitioned from an invite-only to open to the public.
Publicly available data indicates that Bluesky’s unique user count almost doubled from Monday to Tuesday following its public launch.
While Bluesky remains smaller than its primary federated competitor, Mastodon, the growth trajectory of Mastodon serves as a promising case study for Bluesky’s potential.
For context, when Elon Musk finalized the acquisition of Twitter in late October 2022, Mastodon had around 400,000 users, a number that has now grown to 8.7 million. In contrast, Instagram’s Threads boasts a massive user base of 130 million.
Nevertheless, platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon are attractive to users who seek alternatives and resist consolidating even more of their online presence under Meta’s ownership.
Bluesky’s launch encountered some hiccups, particularly with user-generated custom algorithmic feeds experiencing disruptions overnight, as confirmed by CEO Jay Graber.
Despite this, the platform seems to be operating smoothly at present. The outage likely resulted from the increased activity associated with the surge in new users.
