Bluesky: The new app gaining ground against Threads and X –

Table of Contents

• 1 What is the reason for the rapid growth of Bluesky
  • 1.1 Meta’s attempt to answer
  • 1.2 To success story του Bluesky
• 2 **What specific user ⁣demographics or‍ niche communities might be most attracted to Bluesky, and how ⁤can Threads effectively counter these targeted ‍appeals?**

Since election day, usage of the Bluesky app in the US and UK has soared nearly 300% to 3.5 million. daily users, according to data from the research group Similarweb. The site was boosted as academics, journalists and left-wing politicians left Xwhose billionaire owner is a prominent supporter of the US president-elect.

Before November 5, Threads had five times more daily active users in the US than Bluesky, which has just 20 full-time staff and was originally funded by Twitter when Jack Dorsey was its CEO. Now, Threads is only 1.5 times larger than its rival, Similarweb announced.

What is the reason for the rapid growth of Bluesky

Bluesky’s deployment in the US and UK comes after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg chose to deliberately reduce the visibility of political content on its apps, including Facebook and Instagram, the Financial Times reports.

The move was widely interpreted as an attempt to stay out of the partisan fray of the US election and avoid being drawn into debates about free speech. Trump, who has long blasted social media platforms for censoring conservative voices, previously called Meta an “enemy of the people” and threatened Zuckerberg with prison if he is returned to office. Last month, Trump said he likes Zuckerberg “a lot more now” because he “stays out of the election.”

Since its launch in July last year, Threads has prioritized engaging content from accounts that users don’t follow, a model closer to that of photography app Instagram. However, Meta on Thursday backed away from that option.

This contrasts with X, which under Musk’s ownership, has reduced content moderation to allow freer content to spread.

This week, it also quickly rolled out the ability for users to curate “custom feeds” around topics or people they want to follow, mimicking Bluesky’s existing features, after testing the feature for just five days.

Meta’s attempt to answer

These moves have sparked speculation that Meta is trying to curb Bluesky’s rise. Meta announced on this: “We regularly develop new features and updates to Threads – dozens in the last few months alone – to serve the now 275 million users of Threads. And we’ll continue to share more as we work to serve this growing community.”

Experts noted that Threads’ timing was not effective for people looking for content about real-time events.

“The time has now come when they will have to make this decision, if they will bring back the political content and the [συζήτηση] in real time,” Katie Harpath, a former policy director who worked on Meta’s election strategy for a decade, told the Financial Times. “Especially if those Bluesky numbers stay high.”

Adam Tinworth, a journalism lecturer at City St George’s, University of London, described Bluesky in the Financial Times as “essentially a spin-off of Twitter” and thus a “natural replacement” for those disenchanted with X. “Threads is a very different proposition [και] it completely failed during the US election because it pushed news and politics out of the news feed,” he said.

To success story του Bluesky

Bluesky was introduced by Dorsey in 2019 with the goal of developing a single standard, or protocol, upon which social media platforms and other developers could build more customized recommendations.

Now led by digital rights activist and software engineer Jay Graber, users can post short messages and images in an environment very similar to that of X. Development has been aided by a new feature called “starter packs”, the which allows users to follow groups of user-curated accounts with the click of a button.

However, the platform has also suffered from increased outages and glitches as it grows rapidly, with questions about how it will create a viable business model going forward. It was initially funded by Twitter, while last year it raised 15 million. dollars in venture capital and 8 million dollars last year.

Adam Mosery, head of Threads, said last week that the app had gained “more than 15 million users. registrations only in November and [προχωρά] three months with more than a million registrations per day.” But he added: “Now we have a lot more work to do.”

SOURCE: ot.gr