Social network and X competitor Bluesky’s massive growth slowed in December in the U.S., after having surged from 9+ million in September to north of 20 million users in November.
The slowdown is based on an analysis of web traffic and mobile app daily active users by analytics firm Similarweb, which found that Bluesky grew less than 10% month-over-month in December 2024, compared with 189% growth in November.
Daily active users of the Bluesky mobile app in the U.S. also grew 12% in December, compared with 284% growth in November, the firm says.
As of the time of writing, Bluesky has 26.44 million users in total and has begun adopting other X features, like Trending Topics.
The social network benefitted late last year from a user exodus from X, formerly Twitter, following the results of the U.S. presidential election in November. As Elon Musk became more closely allied with incoming President Donald Trump and used X to promote the Trump campaign, X users unhappy with the app’s latest direction moved to Bluesky in search of greener (or perhaps bluer?) pastures.
The move sent Bluesky’s app to the top of the U.S. App Store charts in November, where it maintained a No. 1 Overall rank from Nov. 13 through Nov. 21, 2024, according to data from app intelligence provider Appfigures.
As a result, Bluesky began to attract more attention among the mainstream, as a host of Hollywood celebs, musicians, authors, and journalists joined the social network in November.
Now, the data indicates that the big Bluesky bump is over and growth is starting to normalize.
To be clear, Bluesky is still growing. According to Similarweb, Bluesky grew faster in the U.S. than another X rival, Instagram Threads, in December. That month, Bluesky’s desktop and mobile web visits in the U.S. were up 9.6% month-over-month, while visits to Threads.net dropped by 1.6%. (We should note that while Meta acquired the Threads.com domain in September, it continues to redirect to Threads.net).
Worldwide, website visits to Bluesky’s app were up a comparable 9.5% month-over-month in December 2024, also driven by U.S. growth. That’s ahead of Threads growth of 5.7% and X’s 2.4%, Similarweb’s data shows.
Bluesky’s larger audience means the app now faces growing pains, including user protests over moderation policies, issues with bots joining the platform, and other moves from bad actors like user name squatting and impersonation, which the company attempted to address in a recent app update.
Despite December’s slowdown, Bluesky still had a massive 2024 overall, with year-over-year growth of 930% worldwide, again based on website visits, and two-year growth of 30,564%.