While you’re busy working out your Threads strategy, Bluesky is also steadily rising, and adding new features to align with its audience demands.
Just before Christmas, Bluesky launched its own version of Trending Topics, which will make it easier for users to tap into the latest discussions of interest in the app.
As you can see in this example, Bluesky’s trending topics will be based on systematic detection of key terms, highlighting the topics that are generating the most mentions at any given time.
Here’s another look at the trending list, and the display when you tap through on a topic (via Radu Oncescu):
Bluesky says that this is the first version of its trending topics approach, and that it’ll be iterating based on user feedback.
As per Bluesky:
“You can disable it with the X button or in settings, while your mute words transfer to trending.”
The display is currently available in English language, with Bluesky looking to a wider release in the near future.
It’s the latest advance for the Twitter-clone app, bringing it more into line with what Twitter had been. And many users do see Bluesky as a more Twitter-esque alternative than other apps, particularly due to Threads’ restrictions on political content, which has seemingly limited its capacity to highlight the most relevant news trends.
Bluesky is also more friendly to external links, and that’s helped to better align the platform with publishers and journalists, two key creator groups that are actively seeking to post content.
And given that very few people actually post anything to social apps, with most simply reading, this is a key consideration for growth. Which is why Meta was so freaked out about Bluesky’s sudden rise late last year, though that burst in growth has slowed somewhat, based on the latest stats.
According to Bluesky chief Jay Graber, Bluesky now has 25.9 million users.
The platform rose from 13 million total users in October, to 20 million by mid-November, so its growth has slowed a little over the past 6 weeks.
But it is still growing, while Graber also notes that:
“In the last month and a half, organizations [have reported] a 2-10x increase in the amount of engagement they receive.”
So there may well be opportunity there for brands, but for comparison, 25.9 million users is only 8.63% of Threads’ current active user base.
But it could also be worth establishing a Bluesky presence now, just in case it continues to gain more traction, though I’d be hesitant on going “all in” on Bluesky just yet.
Maybe, if it reaches 100 million users, it’ll be a more legitimate consideration. Though how it’ll actually get to that level, without funding via ads (which Bluesky is trying to avoid), also remains to be seen.
