Among the most significant social media events of 2024 is the growing number of people leaving X. And the major beneficiaries have been ‘new’ platforms, Threads and Bluesky. Now, it’s not just users, publishers themselves have joined the stampede.
In November, The Guardian revealed that it was to cease publishing on X. The platform, it argued had become “toxic”.
The article provoked a flood of messages to us from publishers, telling us that they too were beginning to seriously develop a profile on Threads, Bluesky or both.
Based on the overwhelming interest that we heard from publishers, Echobox is rolling out support for Threads and Bluesky. This means you can post content to both platforms at the click of a button.
So, if you haven’t already begun to use them, here’s why you should.
1. A growing user base
It’s almost impossible to accurately gauge how many users X has lost since Elon Musk’s takeover, as the company doesn’t often release global data on user numbers. Analysis by Euronews gives us an indication, though. Their analysis shows that between October 2023 and September 2024, the company has lost users in all 27 EU countries except Germany which has seen a modest increase of around 600,000. In contrast, Spain, the country with the highest X usage in the EU has seen a decline of almost 7 million users in the same period. This downward trend is mirrored in the UK and US.
A decline in users hasn’t necessarily caused matching increases on Threads and Bluesky, but their numbers have risen.
Bluesky now reports having 23 million users. Meanwhile, Meta’s Threads claimed at the end of October that its user base had reached 275 million active monthly users.
As is often the case with newer platforms, user numbers are no guarantee of sustained engagement in the long term. But the signs are positive.
2. Publisher-friendly algorithms
Aside from the user base, the other key element driving more and more publishers to these newer social networks is the fact that their algorithms have proven more friendly.
To keep engagement on their platforms, legacy networks such as Facebook and X have become increasingly hostile to link posts.
By contrast, Bluesky in particular doesn’t penalize link posting and has positioned itself as the “lobby to the open web”.
It’s early days for both platforms. But if the user growth is sustainable they could present a very attractive outlet for publishers. And those that have developed a presence the earliest stand to make major gains.
3. A growing list of features
One of the quibbles commonplace even at the beginning of the year was the lack of features offered by both platforms.
Bluesky began its first semi-public, invite-only beta in February 2023, with Threads following in short order. Speed of delivery was prioritized, in anticipation of an expected exodus from X following Elon Musk’s takeover. In practice, this meant that both platforms were light on features that one might expect from a social network.
In the intervening period, however, these feature sets have been fleshed out significantly. And given the explosion of users on both platforms it’s reasonable to expect the development of new features will only increase.
This is great news. A better user experience is likely to drive increased engagement and retention. And better engagement and retention will only benefit news publishers in the long run.
But publishers can also feel the benefits of these new features directly. Thread’s new custom feeds, for example, allows users to curate dedicated feeds from profiles they follow — for sports, news, tech etc., which has the theoretical benefit of reducing the amount of input Thread’s own algorithms have over whether publishers’ content is surfaced.
So, is this the end of X?
Probably not. Regardless of all of the upsides to both Bluesky and Threads, there is no escaping the fact that X has far more users than either.
How far publishers continue to invest in the platform depends a great deal on their aims. From the perspective of referral traffic, the changes made to X with regard to link posts have had a negative effect for many. Despite this, the size of the audience, coupled with the historic place of X as the internet’s ‘town square’, means that for some publishers, retaining a presence there is important regardless.
Finally there is also a reluctance to take the plunge and leave an established platform for ones that are still developing and growing — sometimes it’s better the devil you know.
With Echobox supporting both Threads and Bluesky, it’s never been easier to experiment with both platforms. See for yourself what kind of results you can achieve. And whether you want to dip your toe in the water or take the plunge, diversifying your social strategy can only be a positive thing.
