Bluesky, the formerly Jack Dorsey-affiliated, decentralized answer to Elon Musk’s X is closing the gap with Threads at breakneck speed. The browser version of Bluesky surpassed Threads in total usage weeks ago, but now the Bluesky app has exploded to 3.5 million daily active users, putting it just 1.5 times behind Meta’s Threads — an impressive feat considering the Threads app had 5x Bluesky’s active users at the start of the month.

The momentum shift has been nothing short of seismic, especially in the wake of the November 5 election. According to Similarweb data reported by the Financial Times, Bluesky’s user base has ballooned by 300 percent since Election Day. Journalists, academics, and companies are fleeing Elon Musk’s chaotic X (formerly Twitter) in droves, and Bluesky is quickly becoming their platform of choice.

Why Bluesky over Threads? Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to downplay political content on Threads appears to have turned off many users seeking vibrant public discourse. Critics see it as an attempt to stay in President-elect Donald Trump’s good graces, effectively neutering the platform’s potential as a forum for political and cultural debate.

Bluesky has quickly become the go-to platform for what commentator Max Read has called the “Politically Engaged Email Job Blob” — the same cohort that helped transform early Twitter into the cultural juggernaut it once was.

That said, Bluesky is still very much a work in progress. Its rapid growth has brought its share of headaches, including outages, glitches, and scammers. As more users flock to this latest “Twitter replacement,” expect some inevitable growing pains along the way.