SAN JOSÉ (California): The short messaging service Bluesky, an alternative to Elon Musk’s Twitter successor X, gained around 850,000 new users on its first day of free access, the company said on Wednesday, reported German news agency (dpa).
Bluesky had previously restricted the influx of new users. The company dropped the requirement for an invitation code to access the platform from Tuesday. A day later, the company said more than 850,000 new users signed up, passing the four million mark.
The service is designed as a decentralised alternative to X – a platform on which many interconnected online networks can exist. The project was launched in 2019 by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey when he was still head of the world’s most used short messaging service.
Following the Twitter takeover by controversial tech billionaire Musk, interest in alternatives increased.
Since Musk bought Twitter and renamed it X, market researchers have reported that the platform’s user numbers are falling and major advertisers are pulling out.
X has also been accused of failing to moderate hate speech and fake news.
The strongest competition to date has been the rival service Threads from the Facebook group Meta, which recently had 130 million monthly active users. Since the takeover, X has not provided any regular information on user numbers.
X chief executive officer Linda Yaccarino, who was appointed by Musk, merely wrote in a blog post at the end of October, “More than half-a-billion of the world’s most informed and influential people join X every month.”–Bernama-dpa
