In my little echo chamber, it feels like everyone is talking about Bluesky; but, in reality, it’s making relatively little impression outside of certain circles. That, at least, is what I’m taking a little bit more of a look at first this week, with the ongoing landgrab between X, Threads and Bluesky warming up.
Elsewhere, Reddit overtook X in the UK in terms of usage; it’s a viable platform for corporate comms, something I make a case for below. And finally, the issue of Australia banning U16s from social media has been bubbling up over the last few weeks; I start to make sense of it.
I’ll just leave a little plug for my Bluesky account, where I’m posting regularly about digital marketing, and then say let’s get to it!
Microblog Landgrab: X vs Threads vs Bluesky
The world of social media managers seems to be dominated by talk around the ongoing landgrab taking place between X, Threads and Bluesky. I’ve made some sense of it all below.
- Bluesky hit 22 million users this week. But, latest figures report around 1.5 million Daily Active Users (though presumably this is fluctuating all the time). When you consider that the last reports on X state it has 156 million Daily Active Users, it’s safe to say that there’s still a way to go yet.
- That said, that hasn’t stopped X from showing some nervousness. Features such as enabling users to hide engagements could be interpreted as a bid to conceal waning popularity.
- Elsewhere, Threads is just full on cloning Bluesky features, with ‘following’ feeds being tested as the default and the genuinely brilliant starter packs from Bluesky now suddenly coming to the platform.
- That said, Threads did add 35 million new sign ups this month – though recent daily active user data remains scarce.
- Where does this leave Bluesky? Well, this week they’ve had a regulatory headache, with the EU taking issue with user declarations (or a lack thereof). This might be slightly surprising as the platform seems to be providing almost daily boasts of new sign ups, but the issue seems to mainly be a declaration of how many users it has in the EU. This is a technicality and will be a quick fix.
- The bigger issue is that, in my experience at least, the honeymoon period isn’t really translating into usage. Much of my network has signed up and loves the vibe, but isn’t really contributing. I certainly would be reluctant to encourage clients to commit much resource yet.
- It feels like a lot of the same people are posting a lot, while others are either lurking or just out of the microblogging habit. I like it, so hopefully I just need to be patient, and will persevere for a while; you’ll find me here!
We need to talk about Reddit
It was fascinating to see Reddit overtake X this morning, in the UK at least, in terms of platform usage. And yet, as mentioned here before, many brands/organisations seem to ignore it as part of their marketing mix.
As mentioned in the link, Ofcom said Reddit was visited by 22.9 million UK adults in May this year, compared with 22.1 million on X. Admittedly, this isn’t super scientific, but it’s a sign of a greater shift.
My own experiences of advertising on there have been largely positive – a lack of flexibility with ad formats is made up for with good CPMs, and a fantastic ability to target active, niche communities. It seems weird to me as an SMB owner the amount of relevant advertisers who’ll splash the ads on relatively pricey (and difficult to attribute) out-of-home ads, yet don’t seem to be testing Reddit.
It depends on your offering and your audience, but if you have any relevant communities on there who might be interested in your product, it might well be worth giving it a second look.
16 year old debate Australia
I might try and delve into this further in the next few weeks, but it’ll have been hard to miss the news coming out of Australia that 16 year olds are very possibly going to be banned from using social platforms. There are concerns on how this will be enforced, but inevitably this has opened up discussions on whether this could be an option in the UK – though it seems unlikely for now.
With news that TikTok is blocking teenagers from beauty filters over mental health concerns, I expect we’ll see a lot more from the platforms in terms of pre-empting this, and trying to take steps to prevent any further action. Other platforms (i.e. LinkedIn) note that they aren’t really popular with kids/teens.
The obvious thing here in terms of what this means really comes down to your product and audience; its already difficult to use advertising to reach these audiences, but removing the organic audience will force a lot of brands to rethink their approach. This is a big thing to watch going into 2025.
Further Reading
TikTok has noted that it now has 175m european users.
Elsewhere, Elon Musk claims he ‘owns’ everyone’s Twitter account after a (weird) court filing involving Alex Jones. Conspiracy theory bingo card nearly completed.
And finally, a great piece on Wired on just how many LinkedIn posts – particularly LinkedInfluencers – are generated by AI.
That’s it for now! If you found this interesting, I would appreciate it if you shared it with your friends and colleagues.
If you’re feeling particularly generous, I won’t stop you from buying me a coffee. Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you next week!