Elon Musk's recent decision regarding X, previously known as Twitter, inadvertently boosted the popularity of rival platform, Bluesky. Data reveals that Bluesky witnessed a spike in daily active users shortly after Musk declared his intention to introduce a nominal monthly subscription for all X users.
During a live event on September 18, Musk justified the subscription model for X, citing the need to counteract the overwhelming presence of automated bots on the platform. This move, however, was not well-received by X's user base, leading to a significant uptick in Bluesky's user metrics.
Mashable's subsequent report highlighted that, in the aftermath of Musk's announcement, Bluesky registered an impressive 53,585 new accounts by the close of September 19. This influx represents a 5% increase in Bluesky's total user count, which stands at approximately 1.13 million.
Supporting this trend, analytics company Similarweb released a report showing that Bluesky's Android application recorded half a million daily active users on September 18, with an even more pronounced rise in web traffic. The report also indicated a 20.6% increase in Android daily active users compared to the previous day. While data for iOS is currently unavailable, Similarweb anticipates a comparable pattern.