Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app

Post by SanjayMehta » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 2:19 AM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #146

hamburglar wrote: post #99

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?

Here’s another site that tracks monthly active users based on people posting or other activity such as liking a post. It also shows a decline in activity. Scroll down and it looks like a decline of about 40% over a year. https://bluefacts.app/bluesky-user-growth?t=3m

Post by SanjayMehta » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 2:24 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #29

nxm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter's not doing too bad: 550 and 600 million monthly active users according to platform disclosures and industry estimates So maybe the trick is to not just cater to left on your platform.

The only way in which BlueSky is preferentially catering to the left is by existing as an alternative to X and specifically providing tighter control of what is in your feed; and this is only “catering to the Left” because of the groups towards which X either has weakened or stopped enforcing its policies against harassment towards. (In a market with strong network externalities, being the dominant player is self rei…