Bluesky raced to the top of Apple’s App Store on Thursday, with new users flocking to the social app as an alternative to X after its owner, Elon Musk, backed Donald Trump for president.
On Thursday morning, the top free social networking app on Apple’s App Store is Bluesky; in second place is Threads, Meta’s own X-like platform that has enjoyed nice growth following the election.
Data provided to TheWrap by Sensor Tower, a market research company, showed Bluesky’s daily active users count jumped 62% in the week following the election. A rep for Bluesky told The New York Times on Tuesday it had added 1 million users since the election, and The Guardian reported the social posting app now had 14.5 million users.
Bluesky, like Threads, has become a go-to destination for X users who are upset with the platform and Musk following Trump’s victory.
Musk had been Trump’s most vocal supporter in the lead-up to Election Day, helping him win over voters in Pennsylvania and spending more than $100 million via his America PAC to help the Republican get back in the White House.
Threads, TheWrap reported on Wednesday, has seen its user base climb 6.8% since the election. The Meta-owned app now has 11 million daily active users in the U.S., according to data shared by Sensor Tower. And on Thursday, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said that Threads had “More than 15 million signups in November alone.”
A number of well-known media pundits, like MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, have ditched X and turned to Threads this week.
“As a human, I deleted Twitter today as an act of self-preservation and because I could no longer find the things I’m interested in,” Wallace said.
A potential X exodus doesn’t seem to be happening, though — or perhaps more accurately, X has been able to replace users who have left the app with new users joining following the election. That’s because X has also grown since Election Day, with the app’s daily active user count increasing 5% to 25 million DAUs in the U.S., according to data shared by Sensor Tower. On Wednesday, Musk posted X usage is “at all-time highs.”
