• Bluesky's user base has surged due to departures from X, now owned by Elon Musk.
• The platform added 2.5 million new users in a week, with high-profile departures from X cited as a reason.
• X's role in election misinformation and upcoming terms of service changes have contributed to the user shift.
• Despite Bluesky's growth, it still trails behind rivals X and Threads in terms of active users.

In a recent turn of events, social media platform Bluesky has experienced a significant increase in its user base. This surge is attributed to users leaving X, previously known as Twitter, following the election of Donald Trump as U.S. President. The upcoming change in X's terms of service, which could potentially complicate legal challenges for the platform now owned by Elon Musk, is also a contributing factor.

Bluesky reported an addition of about 2.5 million new users in the past week, taking its total user count to over 16 million. The platform is among several apps aiming to replace X after Musk's takeover. We're seeing record-high activity levels across all different forms of engagement: likes, follows, new accounts, etc, and we're on track to add 1 million new users in one day alone, Bluesky stated.

Several prominent organizations and personalities, including the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate, British news publisher the Guardian, and former CNN anchor Don Lemon, have announced their departure from X due to concerns about the platform's content and the impending terms change.

X's Role in Election Misinformation and User Departure

X was criticized by misinformation experts during the election for playing a central role in spreading false information about critical battleground states. On November 6, as news broke that Trump, a Musk ally, won the presidency, X attracted 46.5 million visits in the U.S. - more than any day in the past year and 38% higher than an average day in recent months, according to analytics firm SimilarWeb.

However, more than 115,000 U.S. web visitors deactivated their X accounts - the most since Musk bought the platform, SimilarWeb data showed. Meanwhile, Bluesky's website attracted around 1.2 million visitors on the same day, more than Meta Platforms-owned Threads, which had around 950,000 visitors. But Threads app had more visitors than that of Bluesky.

Abraham Yousef, senior insights analyst at market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, suggested that the outsized growth, particularly for Bluesky, may have been driven by a rise of controversial content or technical issues on competitor X. He added that the departure of popular accounts, media personalities, or organizations, may have led consumers to conclude that X is no longer their preferred platform, which could also be fueling growth on other platforms, particularly Bluesky and Threads.

Upcoming Changes in X's Terms and Its Impact

The surge in Bluesky's user base comes ahead of a change in X's terms on Friday that requires all legal disputes related to the platform to be brought exclusively in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas or state courts in Tarrant County, Texas. The Center for Countering Digital Hate said the change could hinder legal challenges against the platform by steering future lawsuits toward judges Musk believes will be on his side. The nonprofit has criticized Musk for allowing hate speech to spread on X.

Despite the surge, Bluesky's user count is much smaller than rivals. Threads has about 252 million monthly active users on its mobile app, while X has about 317 million, according to Sensor Tower. X seems to be in a better position than it has in a while given the ability to represent the views of president-elect Trump, said D.A. Davidson & Co analyst Gil Luria. While there are other competing platforms, those may have a hard time catching up with X, since microblogging has significant network effects.

This shift in social media platform preference is reminiscent of historical events where users migrated from one platform to another due to changes in policies, management, or user experience. For instance, the migration from MySpace to Facebook in the late 2000s was largely due to Facebook's superior user experience and privacy controls. Similarly, the recent exodus from X to Bluesky seems to be driven by concerns over content moderation and changes in terms of service.