The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.
~ James Baldwin
The Blue Wave River - Tipping Point - Social Media Sky is Blue Again
“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist” ~ James Baldwin
"And it's a human need to be told stories. The more we're governed by idiots and have no control over our destinies, the more we need to tell stories to each other about who we are, why we are, where we came from, and what might be possible.”
~ Alan Rickman
Anti-Musk: The social media site picking up a lot of X refugees in Australia
The platform was conceived as a decentralised Twitter clone by Twitter’s then-CEO Jack Dorsey in 2019, and launched to the public last year, promising almost identical functionality to Twitter but without the baggage and drama surrounding current X owner Elon Musk.
After a somewhat slow start, the platform is now catching on with users. It added 1 million users on Friday alone, climbing past 16 million in total, but faced temporary outages due to what the company blamed on a faulty fibre cable.
Bluesky offers a similar experience to X – users create profiles and can post short messages with text and images – and its user interface looks remarkably similar. A key difference is that it relies on decentralised infrastructure, such as cryptocurrencies, meaning no single individual or organisation owns or regulates it.
“Unlike other closed platforms, Bluesky is an open social network that gives users choice, developers the freedom to build, and creators independence from platforms,” a Bluesky spokeswoman said.
The spokeswoman said 2.5 million users had joined its platform in the past week and Bluesky is “prepared to meet this demand”.
Bluesky remains a relative minnow compared to X, formerly Twitter, which claims 250 million daily users. Despite an estimated 115,000 account deactivations globally, including a number of high-profile users such as Jamie Lee Curtis, Stephen King and The Guardian, X has also been growing its user base since the US election, according to its statistics.
The X platform saw a record-breaking 942 million posts worldwide and a 15.5 per cent increase in new user sign-ups on US election day and the day after, according to a post by official account XData.
Meanwhile, Threads (owned by Instagram’s parent company Meta) is also on the rise. It’s been adding more than a million users a day this month.
It all amounts to a hotly contested social media landscape fuelled further by this month’s US poll.
There are questions now about whether X will merge with Truth Social, Donald Trump’s own social media network that has about 2 million users. Elon Musk bought Twitter for $US44 billion in 2022, and Truth Social’s current valuation sits at about $US10 billion, which would be easily affordable for the world’s richest man, Musk. There are also questions about whether Bluesky can maintain its current growth and momentum, including in Australia.
Kayla Medica, a start-up industry veteran and author of marketing book The Mehdeeka Method, said that Twitter had long closed its Australian office, signifying a lack of interest in the local market.
“From a local investment in staff, offices, and engaging with Australian prominent figures such as journalists and politicians, to a complete withdrawal from the market, X has not viewed Australia as more than a footnote in a closed chapter.”
For Medica, while Bluesky is pitching itself as an X replacement, to date it has shown no indication that it’ll diverge from X’s views of the Australian market.
“The next big thing in social media is hard to predict ... New platforms have a more saturated market, users who already have enough accounts, and without either a clear differentiation like TikTok’s ‘For You’ page focus or an overwhelming level of grassroots engagement, new platforms like Bluesky are facing a Sisyphean task,” she said.
“As for whether or not Musk’s investment in X was worthwhile, the success cannot be measured in a vacuum that only looks at classic tech metrics like active users or revenue from advertising.
“As his personal history shows, his fans are willing to follow him from platform to platform and won’t stay isolated to X even if it eventually shuts, just like the Sydney office.“
David Swan is the technology editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor for The Australian newspaper.Connect via Twitter or email.