Bluesky, and the decline of Twitter (‘X’): what marketers should know

This week (mid-November 2024), Bluesky hit 20 million users. And the social platform — hailed by many as ‘the next Twitter’, in spite of it still having only a fraction of Threads’ user base — keeps growing faster every day.

The sudden rise in popularity has been dubbed the ‘X-odus’, as droves of users flock from Elon Musk’s ‘X’ (formerly Twitter), which has become an increasingly broken and hostile website.

Time will tell what Bluesky becomes, but for now, here’s what we need to know.

What is Bluesky?

Bluesky, like Twitter (‘X’) and Threads, is a text-based social network. To use a distinctly 2007 phrase, it’s a ‘micro-blogging’ website.

You can share short text-based posts (semi-jokingly called ‘skeets’ — a portmanteau of ‘sky’ and ‘tweet’) with images and videos attached, repost (‘reskeet’) other user’s posts, follow and reply to people, etc.

If you’ve ever used Twitter or Threads, Bluesky will be feel immediately familiar to you.

How is Bluesky different?

There are some functional distinctions, e.g. Bluesky is much more ‘open’ and, like Twitter in its heyday, can be built upon with third-party tools, e.g. data analytics dashboards.

There are ‘starter packs’ and ‘blocklists’, which any user can create, so others can find new people to follow (or block!), and you can also create custom keyword-driven feeds, like you once could in TweetDeck.

Another big difference is cultural: the majority of Bluesky users so far are people yearning for a platform that’s built around self-curation and customisation, rather than invisible algorithms. It’s very ‘early internet’.

Why are people leaving Twitter?

The mass exodus from Twitter (‘X’) is largely tied to U.S. politics. Since Elon Musk took over and became a very vocal supporter of the Republican party’s re-election, ‘X’ has become an increasingly hostile space for anyone not aligned with Musk’s views — especially after Musk dissolved Twitter’s user safety team.

There are also functional issues, though: two big changes Musk introduced were, 1. algorithmic boosts for paid ‘X’ subscribers, and 2. payouts for high-engagement users. This prompted the creation of AI-powered engagement-farming bots that now flood everyone’s feeds. Actually seeing the content you want to see has started to feel impossible.

Is there a place for brands and marketers on Bluesky?

Businesses can certainly find an audience on Bluesky, but, as with every new social network, content strategies will need to built from the ground up and adapted to the culture and tonality of the platform.

Think back to the rise of TikTok: brands who just posted their existing video content as-is typically performed quite poorly. Because TikTok was (and still is, though to a lesser degree since Instagram’s introduction of Reels) a different place. Captions were shorter. Instead of hashtags, there were sounds (songs, audio snippets, etc.) anchoring similar pieces of content together. The culture, visual ‘grammar’, and sharing mechanisms of TikTok were unique.

Marketers who learned the ‘language’ of the platform rose to the top fastest. The same is true for Bluesky. Similar to ‘early Twitter’, brands which primarily offer information and real-time updates e.g. encyclopaedias, airlines/public transit networks, sports teams, et al fit right in.

For other businesses, many pillars of a robust Twitter/Threads strategy carry over: be conversational (talking with, not talking to), community-focused (settling in with relevant interest groups, rather than aiming for mass appeal), and authentically fun (working with content marketers who can tap into the zeitgeist without looking like another bandwagon-jumping brand).

However you approach Bluesky, bear in mind: many of its users love the site because it’s a refreshing safe haven away from ads and promotional fodder, so be especially intentional with ensuring your posts are genuinely valuable.

What does this mean for the future of the social internet?

Bluesky (and other ‘Twitter replacements’ like Mastodon) represent a pushback against the siphoning of the internet into a small number of enormous silos, and widespread exhaustion with never-ending feeds powered by algorithms designed to keep us scrolling for as long as possible.

There’s increasing demand for a ‘federative’ social internet — a larger number of purpose-built platforms with firm (but open) interconnectedness between them.

It’s no surprise that Reddit (a single entity, indeed, but one that’s nailed the ‘self-governing network of communities’ structure very well) has seen so much success in recent years, or that Groups is one of the main features of Facebook preventing many people from deleting their account.

In the words of Bluesky CEO Jay Graber herself:

“Social network systems tend to go through periods of consolidation and then fragmentation, and a protocol that connects them all lets this happen naturally. So, the example is: the web itself is a protocol.

“Websites come and go. Some of them consolidate a lot of users, and then over time, they get worse and worse, or they shut down and then users go somewhere else. And that consolidation and fragmentation happens on the web.

“So sites like Bluesky can come and go and grow, and then if we someday aren’t doing the best anymore, something else can come along, and users can fragment out and then maybe re-cohere around someone else who’s doing things really well.”

Ultimately, the social and wider web are liquid and unpredictable, and marketers need to stay agile in how we respond to its flow.

At Trapeze Media, we specialise in hyperlocal marketing, so we’re quite excited to see the ‘shape’ of social media once again becoming moulded by organic interest-based communities (the real kind, not just ‘community’ as a buzzword!) and regional/geographic boundaries.