Bluesky adds 1 million users since US presidential election

The social media platform Bluesky has added one million users since the US presidential election as many users of Elon Musk’s platform X look for an alternative.

Bluesky said on Wednesday that its total users increased to 15 million, up from some 13 million at the end of October.

The social media site has been championed by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and opened to the public in February.

It resembles X, which was formerly Twitter, with a “discover feed” and a chronological feed for accounts users follow.

The post-election increase in users isn’t the first time that Bluesky has benefitted from people leaving X.

Bluesky gained 2.6 million users in the week after X was banned in Brazil in August with 85 per cent of them from Brazil, the company said.

About 500,000 new users signed up in the span of one day last month when X signalled that blocked accounts would be able to see a user’s public posts.

Despite Bluesky’s growth, X saw a 15.5 per cent jump in new-user signups on Election Day, according to the platform, with a record 942 million posts worldwide.

Representatives for Bluesky and X did not respond to requests for comment.