The social media sands have been shifting of late. Twitter (or X) is nearly unrecognisable from two years ago, prior to Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform, for instance.
TikTok and Instagram have largely become the default choices for brands and users in Australia alike. But the platforms have also become remarkably similar.
While Instagram was created as a photo-sharing platform, it has morphed into a video-first site. In fact, views, not likes, is the currency du jour across all of Meta’s platforms now—over the weekend, Facebook started measuring views on photos, text posts and more, not just video. TikTok, meanwhile, has introduced swipe-able photo galleries (just like Instagram).
Even LinkedIn, the preferred medium of over-zealous B2B self-promoters, has launched a vertical, short-form video tab.
However, amongst it all, the global tech press—The Verge, CNET, TechCrunch, et al—has been reporting that there is a new challenger: Bluesky. The app offers users a decentralised Twitter-like experience with text-based news updates and more, without any lingering associations with Musk.
“Bluesky’s decentralised social media platform has steadily grown from 9+ million users as of September to 14.6+ million as of Tuesday, with the latest surge taking place over the weekend as US users fled X,” wrote TechCrunch last week.
“The exodus briefly made Bluesky the No. 2 iPhone app in the U.S. App Store on Monday, up from No. 27 the day after the elections. On Tuesday, it’s dropped slightly to No. 3, behind Meta’s Threads and ChatGPT.”
TechCrunch also noted that “On Monday, multiple outlets reported Bluesky had gained more than 700,000 users over the past week, bringing its total to 14.5 million. One day later, it’s over 14.6 million, indicating that roughly 100,000 users are joining daily. According to data from app intelligence firm Appfigures, Bluesky’s US downloads have grown by 933 per cent year-to-date, while X’s have grown by 48 per cent.”
Bluesky, of course, is starting from a much lower base than X.
The platform was just one of a number of Twitter-like apps that started to gain traction in the weeks and months after Musk acquired Twitter. Mastodon was an even more decentralised experience than Bluesky. Instagram even launched Threads, a text-only spinoff—it arrived to much fanfare but is now largely unheralded.
Read more: Adland Thinks Threads Will Be A Boon For Brands
But while US users might be falling over themselves to join Bluesky, are Australians? And should brands be readying their Hootsuite integration with Bluesky to connect with these consumers? The answer to both questions would seem to be no.
“It’s Just Another Platform”
Amaury Treguer, co-founder of Bread Agency, told B&T that while users have been growing on Bluesky, he would not advise brands to jump on the platform right away.
While interest in the platform has certainly been climbing locally, it is still a minnow compared to other social platforms.
“With Twitter here, there has never been a massive uptake. It’s very much for sports, international news,” said Treguer.
“Threads, we’ve all tried it. We’ve all been testing the water, of course everyone was automatically added with their Instagram account. I was chatting to a brand recently and they said that they had a strategy for Threads but because of the very low uptake, they decided to stop. It was diverting them from building their audience and continuing their efforts on Instagram or TikTok.
“Bluesky is an interesting one, especially if you are in the US or European markets. But I don’t know if people in Australia will bother when they are not already familiar or using X or Threads that much. I don’t think brands will be jumping on this straight away and I would definitely advise them not to do it straight away. It’s just another platform that you need to keep up.”
According to data from We Are Social and Meltwater, X is currently the eighth most-used social media platform in Australia, falling behind Snapchat and only a single percentage point higher than LinkedIn.
Part of text-based social media’s problem in Australia, according to French ex-pat Tregeur, is Australia’s geographic isolation.
“There are conflicts going on around the world that are reported on the news but a lot of it is ‘Hey, there’s a shark in Sydney Harbour!’ or a whale on Bondi Beach. The reality of Australia is that we live quite far away from global politics and conflicts. There are platforms fuelled by those sorts of conversations but here, we’re so far removed from it,” he explained.
Bluesky, then, may fall prey to the same trap as X in Australia. The global consternation and conversations that occupy so much of the European mind, in particular, simply are not as interesting or as pressing in Australia.
Instead of jumping on the Bluesky bandwagon, Tregeur suggested that Reddit, Pinterest and WeAre8 should be where brands are focusing their attention—outside of TikTok and Instagram, which remain the most important.
“There’s only 19 million users, it’s nothing. There are other platforms that you should think about. Reddit is becoming much more like a social media platform now and from an SEO point of view, it’s brilliant. If you want an audience, think about Pinterest, think about other platforms before you jump on the likes of Threads or Bluesky,” he added.
