Probably doesn't matter for the "40M+ users", most of them have churned at this point and growth is negative. This is good critique for the next iteration of open social protocols, but fundamentally atproto did not fail because of technical reasons. The next iteration should make privacy the default and core to protocol, and be very mindful of how the leadership / social dynamics played out.

▲

singpolyma3 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Based on all the traffic and development activity I'm not sure on what basis one would say "failed"

▲

ftfish 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Source?

What I see here doesn't look good.

https://bluefacts.app/bluesky-user-growth

Never mind the pivot to reddit.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/04/bluesky-twitter-rival-reddit...

▲

adithyassekhar 4 hours ago | parent [-]

What’s the definition of success here? Instagram like user counts?

▲

bikelang 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Arguing that success is purely about the ultra high numbers seems to miss the forest for the trees. Is HN a failure because it did not reach the level of DAU as Reddit? The quality of discussion and community here is certainly substantially higher. I feel the same about Mastodon and Bsky vs Twitter. I’ll take community I actually want to engage with over sheer numbers any day.

	▲	ftfish 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Bluesky has about 2-3 year runway, so, we'll see. Source: Bluesky COO https://conference.publicspaces.net/en/session/growth-and-su... (somewhere towards the end in the Q&A section).

▲

tptacek 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think critics would settle for commercial viability, given the funding structure.

▲

4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

▲

verdverm 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They had a vision and goal to change social media, to get people away from Big Social. They haven't failed in the technical sense of closing, there are less than 1.5M daily (the stats trackers are starting to shut down), but they will also never fulfill on the promises. In the startup world, this is called a zombie company.

One way they failed hard is that they talked about how they were against the investors and VC incentives, then they took $100M from Bain Capital (PE) just after peak user count, but didn't tell us for almost a year. They could have put up a simple $5/month to support the cause, but they took investor money instead. This is why I left.

▲

pessimizer 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats

▲

jacobgold 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Bluesky / AT is the most successful open social network in history and the only one to become culturally significant. It has been adopted by presidents, celebrities, journalists, and mainstream users.

Bluesky has ~50M registered users and has sustained ~5M monthly active users for long while. There's no reason to believe it will fall substantially below this level.

It is also in the process of adding (decentralized) subcommunities, which I expect to be really cool and have a large impact on growth.

▲

tptacek 3 hours ago | parent [-]

"Registered users" is a meaningless statistic. Daily active users has consistently declined.

▲

jacobgold 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I'd be the last person to downplay the fact that the Bluesky app has a serious retention problem. But it has "broken through" in an incredible way and DAUs/MAUs are quite stable.

Registered users is not at all meaningless. Bluesky has those user's email addresses, the mobile app is still installed on many of their devices, they have accounts, and they can potentially be reactivated.

For example, if Bluesky announced a feature exciting enough, like subcommunities, it could email those 50M users and possibly bootstrap a serious open network competitor to Reddit.

▲

ftfish 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A chunk of these registered users are apparently "ghost accounts" hosted on a PDS on a trump.com subdomain.

https://bsky.app/profile/tyggero.cz/post/3moskpisnuc2t

Source: https://sifa.id/stats

Statement from Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/pfrazee.com/post/3mmp27wwnic2j

▲

jacobgold 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Based on your comments, it seems like you're trying to spread FUD?

The stats page you linked to explains exactly what's going on. These spam PLC identities have nothing to do with with the tens of millions of real Bluesky registered users.

Either you misunderstood or you're being intentionally dishonest.

▲

ftfish 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Never said that, though, plus provided sources. Just adding context for what the total number of users means.

▲

jacobgold 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You still seem to be implying the number of real registered users on Bluesky isn't ~50M, which it is. The PLC identity spam you referenced is not being counted in this number.

▲

ftfish 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If that's the case, then I stand corrected, but a source for that claim would be helpful.

	▲	jacobgold 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I was rounding up, the actual number is ~45 million: https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats (these stats are based on real activity, not PLC identities) At current rate it will 50M in 6 months.

▲

verdverm 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It is confusing to say "users" when it is actually "accounts", humans tend to associate "user" with another human, where as "account" can cover people and bots (many on atproto)

eg. I personally had more than a dozen accounts

▲

jacobgold 2 hours ago | parent [-]

That's a fair distinction to make but my (educated) guess is that something like 95% of users have a single account on Bluesky.

Most users signed up by downloading the app or visiting the web site and created a single account.

As a point of reference, the official Google Play store independently verifies that the Bluesky app has had 10M+ installs.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=xyz.blueskyweb...

There are no official stats on the iOS app or web but those are both likely similar or larger sources of users.

▲

verdverm an hour ago | parent [-]

I would counterpoint that a non-insignificant number of the accounts are spam/bots. Jaz's stats overestimate because it does not remove certain accounts which have been takedown/deleted, let alone those that remain. I have shared analysis of this on HN, Bluesky, and Discord to avoid making educated guesses.

The reality is that a significant chunk (>50%) was Blue MAGA, or turned off by them, and I see little prospect that they will reactivate. Outside of the Bluesky echo chamber, there is a deep brand association with Bluesky being primarily political refugees. They see Bluesky as the left-wing Truth Social. I've asked hundreds of people IRL if they have heard of Bluesky, they are far more likely to have this brand association than to have heard of "atproto" (more than half vs 1-2% / can count on one hand).

▲

jacobgold 34 minutes ago | parent [-]

Sure, it may overestimate the exact count, but that doesn't change the fact that tens of millions of real people have downloaded Bluesky and signed up.

Right now, Bluesky has one large community, which is already great for some people but not most people. Once Bluesky adds Communities, new communities can form, making it interesting to the other 90% of people who were excited initially and then turned off by it being "one note".

	▲	verdverm 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I think your association with Blueksy is painting a rosier picture for yourself than reality portends. Do you know how many of those accounts never add a profile picture or even liked a single post? Do you think people are likely to reactivate to something they checked out once and has only shrunk since? Can ActivityPub/Mastodon add some new feature that will reactivate all the people who tried that out and moved on? If you'd like to crawl the network to get real data, I built this a while ago https://github.com/verdverm/atmunge (it will take a few days to get sufficient data to do analysis, due to rate-limits)

▲

tptacek 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't believe the firm behind Bluesky can go to an investor and say "look at all these email addresses we have" and raise on that.

	▲	jacobgold 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Of course investors care about registered users, for the same reason I explained. But yeah, they do care a lot more about retention and growth rate for good reason. Bluesky Social, PBC has raised $120M+ dollars from investors.