Bluesky, the social network and competitor to X, saw a significant deceleration in growth during December in the U.S. This followed a remarkable rise from over 9 million users in September to over 20 million in November.
This slowdown is highlighted in an analysis of web traffic and daily active users of the mobile app conducted by Similarweb. The analysis revealed that Bluesky experienced growth of less than 10% month-over-month in December 2024, a sharp contrast to the 189% increase observed in November.
During December, the number of daily active users of the Bluesky mobile app in the U.S. rose by 12%, in comparison to the 284% surge in November.
As of now, Bluesky has a total of 26.44 million users and has started implementing additional features reminiscent of X, including Trending Topics.
The network gained traction in late 2024 due to a surge of users departing from X, previously known as Twitter, following the U.S. presidential election results in November. As Elon Musk forged a closer association with then incoming president Donald Trump and used X to support the Trump campaign, many dissatisfied users opted for Bluesky in search of a more appealing alternative.
This shift propelled the Bluesky app to the pinnacle of the U.S. App Store charts in November. It consistently held the No. 1 Overall position from November 13 to November 21, 2024, as per data from the app intelligence firm Appfigures.
Consequently, Bluesky began to garner greater interest from the public, as a multitude of Hollywood figures, music artists, authors, and journalists joined the platform in November.
Current data suggests that the substantial growth spike for Bluesky has subsided, and its growth trajectory is beginning to stabilise.
It is important to note that Bluesky is still expanding. According to Similarweb, in December, Bluesky outpaced another competitor, Instagram Threads, in growth within the U.S. That month, web visits to Bluesky’s desktop and mobile platforms increased by 9.6% month-over-month, whereas visits to Threads.net declined by 1.6%. (It’s worth mentioning that although Meta acquired the Threads.com domain in September, it continues to redirect to Threads.net).
Globally, visits to Bluesky’s app were up by a similar 9.5% month-over-month in December 2024, primarily driven by growth in the U.S. This figure exceeds Threads’ growth of 5.7% and X’s 2.4%, according to Similarweb’s data.
With a larger user base, Bluesky is now experiencing growing pains, such as user dissatisfaction over moderation policies, challenges with bots on the platform, and concerns about bad actors engaging in username squatting and impersonation. The company has attempted to tackle these issues in a recent app update.
Despite the slowdown in December, Bluesky still achieved impressive results in 2024, reporting year-over-year growth of 930% worldwide, again based on website visits, along with a staggering two-year growth of 30,564%.