Say what you will about Twitter/X, there's nothing else like it out there. But Bluesky is trying, and bit by bit, is growing.
I'm still X all the way, but I keep an eye on alternatives all the time, just in case. When I looked this time, I noticed Bluesky, the still invite-only alternative started by Twitter's ex-founder Jack Dorsey, hit a pretty big milestone - 2,000,000 downloads from the App Store and Google Play, according to our estimates.
That's not Threads kind of downloads, but considering there's no big push and no big brand name behind the protocol that's also an app, this is a milestone.
And more important than the number is the trend.
Two million downloads is a serious milestone for any app. It's even more impressive considering Bluesky still requires an invite to join. Now, 2M downloads doesn't mean 2M users as some have corrected me in the past, but it does mean the potential for 2M users.
Bluesky's early growth was very spikey, which means it was more reactive than actual growth. And it correlates with other events in the industry, mainly Twitter/Elon shenanigans. Truth Social is in a similar boat.
While most spikes return back to their starting point, the last big spike for Bluesky didn't. On July 2nd, the weekend Twitter temporarily throttled users, Blueky saw it's highest spike ever - 116K downloads from the App Store and Google Play, according to our estimates.
Downloads slowed down within a few days, but that week saw 370K downloads. That's roughly 20x the downloads Bluesky saw a few weeks before, where the app averaged two thousand downloads a day.
After the spike dropped back to the low thousands, however, it started rising again. Not spiking, just rising.
By the end of July, Bluesky was averaging 5K daily downloads, and a couple of weeks later 9K. Downloads spiked again last week when Elon Musk suggested X might get fully paywalled. Downloads spiked to 40K for the day and are now averaging 10K a day, according to our estimates.
I'd say growth is still reactive but it's clear it's starting to develop its own bite.
I'm curious to see what happens when it's more accessible.
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