Similarweb: Bluesky's mobile MAUs fell 27% YoY to 10.4M in June and DAUs fell 26% to 3M in July; X's mobile MAUs fell 3% to 302M and DAUs fell 7% to 123.7M
Decentralized social network Bluesky was one of the bigger beneficiaries of the exodus from Elon Musk's X in November 2024, following the U.S. elections.
Context & Ripple Effects
Bluesky’s post-election influx first showed up as a roughly 300% jump in US and UK app usage, then cooled sharply: its December mobile-app DAU growth was far below November’s pace in the first month after the surge. The new year-over-year declines indicate that the burst did not translate into sustained mobile engagement at the same scale.
X had already recorded a US daily-user decline during the 2024 migration period in Similarweb’s earlier US usage data. The latest figures matter because they show both networks shrinking year over year, but from radically different mobile audience bases.
First-order effects
- Bluesky’s shrinking mobile MAUs and DAUs reduce the active audience retained from its 2024 migration wave.
- X’s smaller percentage declines leave it with a far larger mobile footprint than Bluesky in both monthly and daily usage.
Second-order effects
- The comparison weakens the idea that X’s user losses are converting proportionally into durable Bluesky engagement; Bluesky must contend with retention, not only user acquisition, in its competition for switchers.
Third-order effects
- If event-driven migrations continue to fade after their initial spike, social-platform competition will be defined less by sign-up surges than by each network’s ability to hold recurring usage and route share.
The trend: Social-network switching is becoming a retention test: platform shocks can trigger rapid audience movement, but lasting competitive gains depend on sustained daily use.