A new destination for news influencers
Many have tried to compete with social media X (earlier Twitter) since Elon Musk bought it on October 27, 2022. New social media Bluesky, with similar features as X, is the latest new social media destination benefitting from X’s changing reputation under the rule of Musk. It is a new destination for many news influencers especially those who are politically left leaning. But X has anyway more or less kept its position as a destination for news influencers, especially for those who are right leaning, according to a new survey by Pew Research Center.
As Musk’s ownership of Twitter was controversial already start with, others have earlier tried to take at least parts of X’s role. Do you remember the Mastodon boom?
German-owned social media Mastodon, founded by Russian born Eugen Rochko in 2016, experienced a boom in 2022 when users started looking for an alternative to Twitter where new owner Elon Musk had made big changes including down-grading rules for what could be said in posts, and what could not.
In 2024, Mastodon had over 10 million registered users and around 1.5 million monthly active users, according to marketing platform Creatosaurus.
The share of news influencers with a Bluesky account roughly doubled in the four months after the US election in November 2024, from 21% beforehand to 43% by March 2025, the Pew survey shows. The site was first made public in February 2024.
But most of these influencers – including left-leaning ones – are also on X and post there frequently, the survey says.
Musk’s changes to X and involvement with the second Trump administration have raised questions about how many people are leaving the site and searching for an alternative. And since the November election, Bluesky has grown from about 10 million users to 30 million, Pew says.
Many news influencers on Bluesky joined during the platform’s recent wave of growth. About half of sampled news influencers with a Bluesky account (51%) created that account after the 2024 election, including 42% who did so in the last three weeks of November 2024.
“But even with Bluesky’s growth, X remains popular among the 2024 sample of news influencers. As of early 2025, 82% have an account there, about the same share as in summer 2024 (85%).”
“And most of these news influencers with a Bluesky account also have an X account. Only 6% of the influencers we studied have a Bluesky account but not an X account, while 37% have both. The largest share (46%) have an X account but not a Bluesky account.”
“The news influencers from our 2024 sample who are on Bluesky are largely people on the political left. Among those who explicitly identified as liberals or Democrats or who supported Joe Biden or Kamala Harris in summer 2024, 69% now have a Bluesky account.”
“This compares with 15% of news influencers who identified as conservative, Republicans or supporters of Donald Trump. About half of news influencers without a clear political orientation (47%) have a Bluesky account.”
At the same time, most news influencers across the political spectrum have not left X.
“Three-quarters of left-leaning news influencers have an X account, as do 87% of right-leaning news influencers and 83% of those without a clear political orientation.”
About half (54%) of news influencers on Bluesky posted there in the first full week of January, but this share grew to 66% in the last full week of March.
During the same period, X remained popular but saw a small decline in activity: 92% of news influencers on X posted there in the first full week of January, compared with 87% in the last full week of March.
A 2024 survey by Pew shows that X remains more of a news destination than other social media sites despite expectations that it could lose this role when Musk bought the site. The vast majority of US users of all four big social media are seeing news-related content, a Pew survey has shown.
Key findings from the previous survey:
- Majorities of news consumers report getting news from news outlets or journalists on all four sites. X news consumers are the most likely to say this (80%), compared with about two-thirds of news consumers on Facebook (68%), TikTok (67%) and Instagram (65%) who say the same.
- Majorities of Facebook, Instagram and TikTok users say keeping up with news is not a reason they use the sites. X is the exception: Most X users say that keeping up with news is either a major or minor reason they use the platform, and about half say they regularly get news there.
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