Dorsey’s Bluesky usage soars after Musk signals end of free X access

Jack Dorsey-backed social media network Bluesky saw a surge in new users sign-up after Elon Musk announced that he will soon charge all X users a small monthly fee.

Musk’s announcement earlier this week seemed to backfire as Bluesky hit a daily active user record immediately afterwards.

According to data from analytics firm Similarweb, Bluesky’s android app saw half a million daily active users on the day of Musk’s announcement and its web traffic rose even higher.

On Android, the daily active users metric was up 20.6 per cent, with a total of 53,585 new signups in one day after Musk’s announcement — 5 per cent of the platform’s user base of around 1.13 million accounts, reports TechCrunch.

Musk floated the idea that the social network may no longer be a free site in a live-streamed interaction with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots,” Musk said.