While still much smaller than its rivals X and Threads, decentralised social media platform BlueSky Social has almost tripled its active user base in the last few months, surpassing the 20-million-user mark.
The recent US election seems to have been somewhat of a catalyst for BlueSky’s growth, adding as many as a million users in a single day over the last week.
Its growth rate rivals that of Facebook-owned Threads, which reached 275 million monthly users earlier this month, having increased its user base by more than 15 million users in the last three weeks.
What is a decentralised social media platform?
BlueSky sets itself apart from other social media platforms with its decentralised structure.
The app is built on an open protocol, allowing anyone to set up their own infrastructure and create content – users are free to build their own communities in their own ways.
Rather than a top-down structure where content is curated and restricted by the developers, BlueSky functions more as a loose collective of networks – users are invited to develop and implement their own moderation, fact-checking and AI detection tools.
“The goals here are to give developers the freedom to build, and users the right to leave,” BlueSky CEO Jay Graber said.
“The ability for people to host their own data means that users always have other alternatives, and that their experience doesn't have to just come from us.”
There’s also no strict content algorithm in place – users follow individual, group or company pages and their posts are fed directly into their feed.
The tactic appears to have wide appeal – after the US election, BlueSky saw a 519% spike in use in the US and 352% in the UK according to data from Similarweb (NYSE:SMWB).
“BlueSky’s audience is still much smaller than that for Threads, let alone X – but could catch up with Threads if it keeps growing at this rate,” Similarweb’s report read.