What is Bluesky, and should your business be on it in 2025?

Curious about how Bluesky Social works? Check out our complete guide to the decentralized alternative to X and Threads. The post What is Bluesky, and should your business be on it in 2025? appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.

Feb 13, 2025 - 17:38

What is Bluesky, and should your business be on it in 2025?

Bluesky has been top of mind for social media professionals recently. The text-based, open source social media platform has been seeing rapid growth, adding a million users a day for several days in November 2024.

So what is Bluesky all about? Should your brand be exploring this new-ish social network? Here’s everything you need to know.

What is Bluesky?

Bluesky is a decentralized, text-based social media app created by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. It’s now led by CEO Jay Graber.

“Decentralized” means that Bluesky runs on a system (the AT protocol) that is not controlled by any one person or organization. Instead, developers and individuals have more control over the user experience, and the workings of the network are more transparent.

That means Bluesky is highly customizable. There are currently more than 50,000 algorithmic feeds available, and anyone can create a new feed. This is a significant difference from social platforms where a master algorithm controls what users see.

Discover new feeds science art news on Bluesky

Source: Bluesky

Bluesky started as an invite-only app, but it has been open to anyone who wants to join since February 2024.

Why is Bluesky becoming more popular?

First, let’s confirm that Bluesky is indeed becoming more popular with a couple of quick stats.

As of February 2024, the platform has more than 31.5 million users.
Its user base grew by 13 million people in the last six weeks of 2024 in the wake of the U.S. presidential election.

Google searches for Bluesky peaked the week of November 17-23, 2024, but attention remains strong heading into 2025.

Bluesky vs mastodon news Google Trends interest over time

Source: Google Trends

The Bluesky app is also seeing significant downloads on both iOS and Android. In fact, it became the top free app in the Apple App Store in mid-November. (Followed by Threads, Meta’s X alternative.)

Number of Bluesky downloads from February 2023 to July 2024 by platform

Source: Statista

Bluesky’s unique U.S. visitors have more than doubled in the last year. However, as you can see in the chart below, they are still just a fraction of the visitors seen by X.

US unique visitors to X formerly Twitter and Bluesky October 2023 to October 2024

Source: eMarketer

So, what’s behind the growth in popularity?

An alternative to X

X has seen a lot of change since Elon Musk rebranded it from Twitter. Users have expressed concerns about content moderation policies, misinformation, and the overall tone of discourse.

X has become increasingly political, partly because it’s the platform where people are most likely to specifically seek out political information. Pew Research Center found that 59% of X’s U.S. users say they use it to keep up with politics or political issues, compared to just 36% of TikTok users and 26% of those on Facebook and Instagram.

For brands in particular, this can create a challenge. Political policies are the top cultural area consumers say brands should stay away from on social media. Some view Bluesky as an alternative with a less political slant, where things are more light and fun. (Others would say it has an equally political slant, just a more left-leaning one.)

Bluesky began its development back in 2019 as a Twitter project to “develop an open and decentralized standard for social media,” partially because “existing social media incentives frequently lead to attention being focused on content and conversation that sparks controversy and outrage, rather than conversation which informs and promotes health.”