Similarweb: Bluesky's mobile MAUs fell 27% YoY to 10.4M in June and DAUs fell 26% YoY 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 surge was exceptionally sharp: its U.S. daily audience rose roughly 300% in November 2024, and its gap with Threads narrowed in the same period. By December, however, monthly U.S. mobile growth had slowed markedly from November’s pace.
The new Similarweb figures turn that deceleration into a year-over-year contraction for Bluesky, while X is also declining but from a substantially larger mobile base. The contrast matters because Bluesky’s initial growth was tied to users leaving X rather than to a demonstrated replacement at X’s scale.
First-order effects
- Bluesky’s mobile audience is smaller than a year earlier, indicating that the users acquired during its post-election usage surge have not been retained at the same level.
- X’s mobile audience is also declining, but its 302M monthly active users and 123.7M daily active users leave it far larger than Bluesky in the reported measurements.
Second-order effects
- Bluesky now has less evidence that dissatisfaction with X alone can sustain mobile engagement, increasing the importance of converting episodic sign-ups into habitual use.
- X’s smaller percentage declines preserve its relative scale advantage over Bluesky, limiting the competitive impact of Bluesky’s earlier audience gains.
Third-order effects
- The figures point to a social-platform market in which migration waves can rapidly create challengers but do not by themselves establish durable daily-use alternatives.
- If this pattern persists, competition for users leaving incumbent platforms will increasingly be decided by retention rather than download bursts or short-term account growth.
The trend: Social-network switching is becoming a retention test: political or product-driven exits can fuel rapid adoption, but sustained daily use determines whether challengers gain lasting share.