Bluesky's active user base shrinks as it pivots beyond the app
Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app
Bluesky, the decentralized social network that benefited from the post-election exodus from X, is now seeing its mobile app usage plummet. According to Similarweb, monthly active users fell 27.2% year-over-year to 10.4 million in June 2026, and daily active users dropped 25.6% in July. The decline is even steeper compared to its late-2024 peak, with a 52% drop in quarterly MAU. However, CEO Toni Schneider is less concerned, as the company focuses on growing the AT Protocol ecosystem with apps like BlackSky and Skylight, and new products like Attie. Meanwhile, X's numbers are also down, while Threads is surging.
The company is not entirely focused on making Bluesky (the app) succeed, but on making it possible for the underlying protocol (AT Proto) to power a growing number of social apps, services, and communities.
- hamburglar
I notice that the stat the article repeatedly quotes is MAU for usage of the mobile app, but one of the things I love about Bluesky is that you don’t need to use a mobile app to have a good UX. I use the mobile browser to access it, so I’m not in that MAU number. Perhaps bsky has a larger number of active users that don’t use the app?
- omoikane
Maybe Bluesky is not quite the Twitter rival it set out to be, but it's got a better shot than Mastodon, according to the user count graphs here:
https://mastodon-analytics.com/
Bluesky has a higher total user count. I think the number of active users might be higher too, but I am not sure what's mastodon's definition of an active user for the second link above. Anecdotally, Bluesky feels more lively for me because that seem to be the default destination for Twitter refugees.
- maelito
How are the X figures computed ? Bluesky is a public network, anyone can analyse and count. What about X, held by Musk ?
- dbbk
If Meta had put Threads on the AT protocol instead of ActivityPub, things could have been so different... maybe there's still time. The engineering philosophy for AT / Bluesky is incredible, being able to develop your own timeline algorithms, distributed moderation agencies, etc. But whenever I give Bluesky a try unfortunately I just can't find people talking about my interests. This seems like a scale problem, which Threads solves.
- blakesterz
Toni Schneider was just on Decoder last week too talking about this and more
https://www.theverge.com/podcast/974387/bluesky-toni-schneid...
- cdrnsf
We have ample evidence that platforms whose goal is to shove everyone you've ever met into the same room isn't a good thing. Modest growth and a healthy community that doesn't have to include everyone to succeed seems like a good thing.
- jimmydoe
there's nothing you can do technically to fix bluesky.
people just hate social networks at this point in this timeline.
- eterm
I wanted to like bluesky, I really tried, but when 90% of it ( after filtering out politics ) is people talking about the platform itself, it's off-putting.
I don't want to hear about atproto, or "the atmosophere", I want to hear about actually interesting things.
It'd be like if 90% of twitter was talking about twitter the platform, it's an odd thing to focus on.