Bluesky Chief Operating Officer Rose Wang announced at SXSW in London on Wednesday that the platform would shift its strategy away from rivaling X and instead take inspiration from Reddit's community forum model. Wang stated the site would move away from the 'public square' style feed and focus on becoming a discovery mechanism. The announcement comes as Bluesky has 43 million global users as of March, representing approximately 10% of X's estimated 450 million users worldwide, while Meta's Threads surpassed 400 million active monthly users last year.
Bluesky Reports 43 Million Users Compared to X and Threads
Bluesky had 43 million global users as of March, compared to an estimated 450 million X users worldwide. Threads, the Instagram-linked platform Meta launched in 2023, surpassed 400 million active monthly users last year, per its executives.
According to a former engineering lead at Bluesky who posts user statistics on the platform, Bluesky declined from a peak of 1.4 million active daily posters in late 2024 to around 600,000 today. At the end of October last year, the platform had reportedly seen a 40% drop in daily mobile active users over the preceding 12 months.
Wang said the decline "generally follows the retention curve of a lot of social companies, where there's like big outside events, and then there's a leveling out, but that leveling out is much higher than the previous bump, and so it's not all downhill."
Wang Outlines Reddit-Inspired Strategy at SXSW London
"The world is changing rapidly, and we're not trying to build what social used to be and get to parity," Wang told CNBC on the sidelines of SXSW in London on Wednesday.
Wang said that Bluesky would move away from the "public square" style of feed of X or Threads. "What we've learned through this process is that I think the public square is not the direction we want to go in. Essentially, I think it's useful as a discovery mechanism, but we're very inspired by companies like Reddit," she said.
"A public square, where there's only a stage, and there's posters, like people on a stage and people who are watching, that is not social... we're in the medieval stages of the online world," Wang stated.
Reddit launched in 2011 and billed itself as "the front page of the internet," offering "sub-Reddits" on a huge range of topics. It went public in 2024 and trades at around $170 a share.
Bluesky is built on an open-source AT Protocol, allowing developers to build apps, services, and communities with greater control over their content. Bluesky was initially founded within Twitter in 2019 and backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, but it spun off in 2021. After Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, the companies ended their service agreement.
Platform Prioritizes Video Feature Development
Bluesky raised $100 million in Series B funding in April 2025.
Bluesky needs to "modernize and also get to parity on video features," specifically upload speeds and the length of videos that can be published, Wang told CNBC. "That's one area that we haven't done well in, but I do think that this is an opportunity. Our biggest challenge is our biggest opportunity," Wang said.
She added that Bluesky had not definitively ruled out ads, but said other companies treated the advertising business model "as if they had discovered oil."
FAQ
What strategy did Bluesky announce at SXSW London?
Bluesky Chief Operating Officer Rose Wang announced on Wednesday that the platform would shift away from the "public square" style feed and take inspiration from Reddit's community forum model, focusing on becoming a discovery mechanism.
How many users does Bluesky have compared to X and Threads?
Bluesky had 43 million global users as of March, compared to an estimated 450 million X users worldwide and over 400 million active monthly Threads users as of last year.
What development priorities did Bluesky identify?
Wang told CNBC that Bluesky needs to "modernize and also get to parity on video features," specifically upload speeds and the length of videos that can be published.
