A new monarch butterfly takes to the sky in West Palm Beach, Florida on April, 2012.
Bluesky is having a social media moment, as many Twitter--ok fine, "X"--users search for an alternative to the Elon Musk-owned platform.
The 2024 presidential election did not mark the end of the United States' deep political and cultural divides. And with X so closely tied to Musk (and by proxy, Donald Trump), many of its non-MAGA users are seeking friendlier territory for their social media addictions.
Personal note: I'll be leaving Twitter for Bluesky.
You can follow me and our work over at Bleacher Report @brentsobleski.bsky.social
As for those sticking around these parts... pic.twitter.com/Bb9ktJaOo5
We'll see whether Bluesky can sustain its momentum. Many would-be X competitors had similar moments in the sun before fading into obscurity. (Is Mastodon still a thing?) The upstart will have to quickly reach a content-provider tipping point to keep its users around.
Bluesky's ascent certainly seems to have more juice than previous X alternatives, however, with the platform adding new users at an incredible pace.
Those on Bluesky are so happy with the platform that they keep coming back to X every day to tell us about it! pic.twitter.com/jiujotlatT
Until the outlook clears, sports content creators face a dilemma: Stay on X and bet that Bluesky interest fades? Move to Bluesky and build an audience as an early-adopter? Copy and paste all tweets into "skeets" (fantastic shorthand for "sky tweets")?
The most popular decision, so far, seems to be to post on both platforms. It's the default way to stay neutral in the fight. And that appeals to those who wish to continue serving sports content to far-leftists, Kamala Harris voters, and the Trumpiest of Trump supporters alike.
Is it the coward's way out? Maybe. But most sportswriters and other sports content creators avoid expressing many political opinions on social media. Most athletes, too.
That doesn't mean they lack strong political beliefs. But for those in the business of growing an audience, it's costly to regularly offend somewhere around half of your subscribers. And, while the "stick to sports" crowd is often insufferable, there's truth in their argument that many look to sports as an escape from life's weightier concerns.
The show is becoming unwatchable with Grahams political commentary. Stick to sports.
In some ways, the fragmentation of social media along political fault lines is inevitable. It's exactly what happened with cable news networks, for example (think Fox News vs MSNBC). People do not seem particularly concerned about "echo chambers" unless they're talking about the other side's chambers.
But some of the challenges that X rivals face, however, are unique. Even those turned off by X's Musk/Trump vibes have X communities and content providers that they don't want to abandon. Changing long-embedded social media patterns is more difficult than switching a TV channel.
A colleague recently told me that (generally) left-leaning sports journalists will eventually return to X because that's where the (generally) right-leaning sports fans will remain. But even if one accepts the premise that sports fans lean right, it seems entirely possible that fans follow the content. We have a real chicken and egg thing going on here.
It will be fascinating to see how it all plays out.
John Foley (@2008philz) can be found on both X and Bluesky.
