The BlueSky migration: How cultural shifts can disrupt even the most established social media platforms

Twitter clones have proliferated since Elon Musk first bought and renamed the platform to X in 2022. Despite a lot of buzz around platforms like Mastodon and BlueSky, none have seemed to capture a significant audience, with X’s weekly active usage remaining consistent.

Until now, that is. 

In August, X’s Brazil ban resulted in notable user growth for BlueSky in South America and Portuguese-speaking countries, with BlueSky reporting triple-digit percentage user growth in some cases. At the time, this seemed like a relatively minor cultural shift, rather than any significant threat for X. Now, it is clear this was actually a prequel, setting the stage for current events. 

BlueSky is the new digital nest for former X users 

Since Donald Trump’s election win and the  appointment of Musk to the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), BlueSky has again reported a huge growth in users (per Forbes). This is the continuation of a gradual platform shift that first began back in 2022.

The first to migrate from X to BlueSky were mainly die-hard Twitter fans, while the boost in August came from casual users in the South America region and Portuguese world. The latter were forced to migrate as their cultural centre of gravity – their digital “town square”, as Musk has often referred to X – moved from one platform to another out of regulation-driven necessity. However, the current shift is entirely voluntary and includes news outlets like The Guardian and celebrities including Lizzo, with Sky News reporting that even Google Search is allegedly prioritising BlueSky results over X for information in some cases. 

BlueSky’s appeal is likely bolstered by its connection to one of Twitter’s original founders, Jack Dorsey, meaning that people who liked the platform’s original concepts are keen to return to a close-to-original version. However, the more realistic reason for BlueSky’s current success  is that the app was in the right place at the right time back in August. As a result, by November, it had developed a cultural centre of ‘gravity’ that made it more likely to attract new users seeking an X alternative post-election. 

The social media marketplace is fragmenting, with too many options emerging to compete and none with enough users to stick as long as the biggest players remain at large. BlueSky was ideally positioned to benefit when one of the incumbents slipped, however, and its current growth is the result. 

The Elon Musk effect and how X’s core changes sparked a BlueSky migration

X’s slip is not simply an issue of shipping a disappointing feature or altering its algorithm. Those things have been happening since 2022 and resulted in no significant change. The big difference is that X is tied to Musk on a personal – and now political – level, making it not so much a social platform as it is a news broadcast of his interests with some social features on the side. Or at least, this seems to be the consensus among consumers, with algorithmic curation seen to promote his voice and interests while dampening alternatives. 

The lessons here for social platforms are twofold. One is that slippage of incumbents is possible, and alternatives do have the opportunity to step into the gap. The other is what that slippage comprises. 

A platform can launch disappointing features and tweak its algorithm to be biassed, as long as users and their networks are still present and able to communicate with each other. However, changing the core proposition will cause disruption. Elon Musk’s X platform has arguably turned into his political megaphone, utilised for ends many users disagree with. 

For other social platforms, however, this could be more subtle. Instagram has loaded posts, reels, and even stories with ads and brands, hindering the ability for individual users to reach each other outside of DMs. Even DMs are being disrupted, with brands and artists alike now able to add users to ‘broadcast channels’, which amount to group chats they can message directly. 

Meanwhile, TikTok has always prioritised entertainment over social features. However, in attempts to boost longer-form content for better monetisation, and by introducing creator subscriptions to make it more appealing to content creators, it risks shifting too heavily towards a commercially driven, entertainment-focused model, which could undermine  the off-the-cuff, authentic content it became popular for. While this may not be enough to dissuade users, regulations have the potential to impact it in the US, which could result in a similar outcome to X’s Brazil ban. 

In short, cosmetic changes do little to disrupt platforms – but existential ones have the power to. For X, it was politics. But other social media platforms are not immune, and this could open the door to new competitors who, like BlueSky, are adeptly positioned to benefit when that change becomes too great.