Bluesky has seen significant growth in the recent past. It quickly ballooned to over 20 million users, and at one point the service was adding over a million users per day. Between X being banned in Brazil earlier this year and the results of the 2024 US presidential election, a large group of people have decided to leave X.
But they're not leaving for Meta's Threads, a more popular alternative to X at the time — instead, they're switching to Bluesky.
Rise of Bluesky
For one reason or another, people are choosing Bluesky over Threads. Perhaps they like the look and feel of Bluesky better, or they just don’t want to support yet another social media platform owned by Meta and Mark Zuckerberg. Either way, Bluesky’s sudden rise seems to be scaring Meta.
Since Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in October 2022, people have tried a number of Twitter alternatives, including Mastodon, Pebble (formerly T2), Bluesky, Threads, Hive Social, Post.news, and even Tumblr. Among all these options, several have either closed completely or the companies have failed to gain traction — and for a long time, it seemed like Threads would be the only viable alternative. Until now.
Meta Is Scared
Threads has grown to over 200 million users since its July 2023 launch, and Meta probably thought they had the whole “Twitter alternative” thing in their pocket. While Threads was a viable social media platform, the company definitely didn’t put much effort into actually pleasing its users.
For example, I personally never liked that Threads didn’t let you switch your default feed from “For You” to “Followings.” Sure, X does the same thing, but Threads also hid the default feed toggle, requiring users to tap the Threads logo at the top to reveal that menu. They really wanted you to use “For You.”
Now both of those things are gone, as the feed toggle is prominently displayed, and Threads is “testing” the ability to set “Followings” as the default feed.
These are all little features that Threads could have added at any point but chose not to. Now they’re all here, likely to make the platform more appealing.
Copying Bluesky Features
Best comment from Nikon8
Everyone should stay away from meta as much as possible.
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Threads has also copied a number of Bluesky features in recent weeks, including custom feeds and starter packs. Custom feeds let you create a feed of a specific group of people, making it easy to follow a single topic or community. Starter packs let you easily follow a group of people who have something in common. These two features have been key to Bluesky's growth and make it much easier to create a compelling feed.
Starter packs aren't available in Threads yet, though the feature has already been reverse engineered. Custom feeds are already available in Threads for all users, apparently.
Competition is a good thing
Ultimately, it's unclear who will ultimately win this “Twitter alternative” race, but one thing is clear: Bluesky and Threads are the key contenders. In the end, I don't care which platform “wins,” but this is an extreme example of competition being a good thing. Meta wouldn't suddenly bother implementing all these key UX improvements to Threads if they didn't have a reason to.
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