Bluesky now has more than 38 million users. Matteo della Torre/Nurphoto Via Getty Images
Bluesky is increasingly emerging as a rival to X, and nowhere is that more evident than in the platform’s burgeoning scientific research community. According to a new study, Bluesky boasts higher interactive engagement and content originality for scholarly posts than X.
The research, conducted by the University of Sheffield in England and the Renmin University of China, claims to be the first large-scale analysis of scientific communication on Bluesky. The study—still awaiting peer review—found that scholarly activity on the platform has surged since November 2024, coinciding with a broader migration away from X toward alternative social media sites.
Bluesky was created in 2019, initially incubated under Twitter and became independent in 2021. Officially launching in 2023 under CEO Jay Graber, the platform has since grown to more than 38 million users. While its interface looks strikingly similar to X, Bluesky differentiates itself with a decentralized, open-source network that gives users more control and personalization.
The study analyzed more than 2.6 million Bluesky posts referencing scholarly content between January 2023 and July 2025. It found that posts, users and referenced articles have all been on an upward trajectory. In October 2024, for example, there were around 10,000 posts, 3,200 users and 6,500 referenced articles. By November, those figures had surged to 239,000, 35,000 and 54,000. They peaked in January of this year at 324,000 posts by 45,000 users referencing 71,000 unique articles.
Activity has since stabilized, with a slight decline. “The stabilization of posts, users and referenced articles suggests that Bluesky has already established itself as a credible and lasting platform for science communication, rather than a short-lived trend,” Er-Te Zheng, one of the study’s authors and a Ph.D. student at the University of Sheffield, told Observer via email.
Bluesky’s growth comes amid an exodus of X users dissatisfied with Musk’s leadership and changes such as loosened content moderation. A January poll by Nature found that more than half of 5,300 respondents—most of them scientists—said they had left X.
Those who have turned to Bluesky are showing higher levels of engagement. More than 48 percent of scholarly posts received at least 10 likes, while 34 percent were reposted at least 10 times. By contrast, previous research on X found that only 3.9 percent to 7.5 percent of scientific research posts received more than 10 likes, and just 1.4 percent to 4.4 percent received 10 reposts or more.
Bluesky also fosters more original content, as shown in the low number of posts that simply replicate a research paper’s title, the study found. Only 6.3 percent of the analyzed Bluesky posts contained nothing more than an article title. On X, title replication rates have been shown to range anywhere from 11. 8 percent to 92.4 percent, depending on various scientific disciplines.
Bluesky still pales in size compared to X, which Elon Musk claimed had around 600 million monthly active users as of May 2024. But the platform’s high levels of engagement and originality suggest it’s carving out a distinct niche. “This suggests that Bluesky users participate more actively and with greater originality in interactions around scholarly articles,” Zheng said.
