In recent weeks, there have been many reports about users fleeing Twitter (X? The social media platform formerly known as Twitter?) for similar, less-abusive spaces. Meta’s Threads platform has a big advantage amongst the alternatives, but the upstart platform BlueSky has recently been garnering more attention.
Why is BlueSky, with less than 10% the userbase of Threads after finally moving past its beta in early 2024, getting so much attention? It’s a more decentralized platform that closely mirrors Twitter’s design (in part because Jack Dorsey, cofounder of Twitter, helped cofound BlueSky). This appeals to former Twitter users (and even current Threads users) because Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter is a stark reminder of the issues that come with oligarchic ownership. Although Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t appear to be micromanaging Threads right now, there is concern amongst the social blogging sphere about Big Tech shadowbanning anything that threatens their dominance, along with algorithmic tweaks in favor of incremental profit over user experience.
Part of the recent move to BlueSky is social virality. “I’m leaving Twitter and joined [XYZ other platform]” first posts are in vogue, and new platforms give people a more egalitarian chance to rise to the top. Threads remains a top competitor because it essentially imported its Instagram userbase, but the consequence was that the top voices of Instagram were easily able to maintain their dominance on Threads. Many others created accounts, but didn’t put them to more active use (Instagram post frequency is generally a lot lower than Twitter post frequency). On the flipside, BlueSky has plenty of space to grow, and it’s attracted major media outlets as well as some big entertainment and artist communities who previously made frequent posts on Twitter.
Time will tell what social blog platform(s) become the new dominant players, and a big factor will be the network effects of microinfluencers. People with millions of followers are often firmly established in legacy social media, with social blogging platforms as secondary channels to broadcast info more than for generating income. In contrast, people with 5k-50k followers are perfectly willing to move into new areas and explore novel spaces to communicate with their fans. Those networks are also likely more willing to follow their influencers of choice to new platforms. The platform gets more actively-engaged networks will also inherit a community interested in novel platform usage that drives popular culture forward, attracting more users in turn. That’s the platform strategy that wins.
Andrew Jabara 