Observed Signal · Sep 16, 2024 · Technical Release · Source: OnlineMarketing.de · Impact: 2/5 · Sentiment: Positive
Bluesky Reaches 10 Million Users
Bluesky, the decentralized social app, has reached 10 million global users. The growth came largely after a Brazil-specific ban on X (formerly Twitter), with over 2 million people in Brazil signing up within days, making Bluesky a key regional alternative. The platform is positioning itself against Threads and X for market share. Bluesky emphasizes safer, more transparent social networking with anti-toxicity features and feed customization, including the ability to separate a user’s posts from quotes to reduce negative interactions. Creator-focused features have rolled out over time, starting with post embeds in spring, followed by Direct Messages and GIF posting options. The latest update adds video posting, available via version 1.91 (desktop users can refresh), with a gradual rollout. Overall, Bluesky’s rapid user growth is accompanied by ongoing feature expansion aimed at creators and growth.
Moderate industry relevance; platform growth and feature updates for a social platform (not a major adtech platform).
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- Bluesky reached 10 million users worldwide.
- Over 2 million Brazilians registered within days after X's ban in Brazil.
- Spring updates included post embeds, Direct Messages, and GIF posting options.
- Video posting is now available with version 1.91, rolling out gradually.
- Bluesky emphasizes anti-toxicity features and feed customization (e.g., separating posts from quotes).
Connected Companies & Entities
1 Entity mappedRelated Market Signals & Shifts
Recent verified developments and strategic activity across this market segment.
Bluesky: Super Bowl spike and drafts rollout
Bluesky, an open social network, continues to grow but remains smaller than rivals. In 2025 Bluesky’s user base rose from 25 million to 42 million, while Threads reportedly surpasses 400 million monthly active users. Growth is aided by high-profile accounts and events, including media outlets and figures such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Stephen King, and the New York Times, plus major events like the Super Bowl with Bad Bunny, which boosted Bluesky activity by about 70% during the game. The platform also rolled out version v1.116, introducing a Drafts feature in the Post Composer to create and save posts for later. A welcome-screen refresh accompanied the release, featuring artwork by @odpomery.bsky.social with light and dark theme variants.
Bluesky pivots toward Reddit-style community model
Bluesky, the social network that originated inside Twitter, is shifting its strategy away from trying to mirror X or Threads and toward community-driven, Reddit-style spaces, Bluesky COO Rose Wang told CNBC at SXSW London. The platform, built on the open-source AT Protocol, has significantly fewer users and lower engagement than X — roughly 43 million global users as of March and about 10% of X’s estimated global audience. Bluesky raised $100 million in a Series B in April 2025, but daily active posters reportedly fell from a late-2024 peak of 1.4 million to roughly 600,000. Wang said Bluesky will prioritise discovery and community features and needs to modernize video capabilities (upload speeds and longer video length). The company has not ruled out advertising, though it does not view ads as a foregone conclusion.
Scaling Uber: Thuan Pham on Engineering and AI
This episode of The Pragmatic Engineer features Thuan Pham, Uber’s first and longest-serving CTO and current CTO of Faire. The interview reviews Pham’s seven-year tenure at Uber — stabilizing a fragile system, re-architecting a monolith into microservices, and scaling the engineering organization — and covers the platform-and-program organizational split, the Helix mobile app rewrite, rapid launches such as Uber China, and the internal tools and observability systems that supported growth. Pham also describes dividing his time into three “tours of duty,” current work at Faire including AI uses like “swarm coding,” and career advice. The newsletter lists 14 key takeaways summarizing lessons on hiring, naming conventions, global hiring, architecture rewrites, and AI’s role in software engineering.
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