Front Burner

Can Bluesky take out X, aka Twitter?

With X, formerly Twitter, reeling in the Elon Musk era, can Bluesky, a social media site that recently picked up over 10 million users, deliver a knockout blow?
A closeup of a hand holding a phone with a Bluesky homepage on its screen.
A cell phone user looks at Bluesky Social in Lima, Peru, on Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

Since the U.S. election last month, Bluesky – which describes itself as 'social media as it should be' – has gained a lot of traction.  They now have more than 24 million users, and traffic on the site is up 500% in the United States in the last month.

Many users have fled there from X (formerly Twitter) which has seen a sharp decline since Elon Musk bought the platform in 2022. The frequency of bots, partisan advertisements and harassment are often cited as reasons for leaving the social media platform.

Ed Zitron is a tech journalist who hosts the podcast Better Offline, and writes the newsletter Where's Your Ed At

He talks to host Jayme Poisson about the rise of Bluesky, what differentiates it from X, and what this all means for the future of social media.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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