Back when Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X, it felt like all social media–related news was about which app would step up and replace it. Many Twitter users jumped ship, seeking refuge on platforms like the still-growing Threads and (the less straightforward) Mastodon. Another app that came up plenty in these conversations was Bluesky.

In May 2023, about six months after Musk took over Twitter/X, we noted that Bluesky, founded by former Twitter chief Jack Dorsey, was attracting previous tweeters with its “fizzy, infectious” energy. Then Meta introduced Threads, and all other potential X rivals seemed like also-rans.

But recently Bluesky has returned to the headlines. Its number of users has more than doubled since September, according to an article in Social Media Today.

“Is Threads Really Scared of Bluesky?” asked that story’s headline, signaling that even if X isn’t worried about Bluesky, perhaps X’s largest competitor—Threads—might be. The article reports on Bluesky’s massive rise in users, from 9 million in September to 20 million now. Threads currently has 275 million active users, so the race isn’t close, but Bluesky’s surge is worth noting—and apparently it has the power to drive other social platforms to be better. In response to Bluesky’s rise in users, Meta confirmed it has accelerated projects and added new features.

Over on Mashable, there have been more than a dozen stories about Bluesky since mid-November, including one headlined “X users are fleeing to Bluesky.” Other topics range from how great the platform’s engagement is to what it can learn about growth from X.

As with almost anything else online, with great success comes problems. For Bluesky, that means the increasing possibility of fake accounts. The app is promising aggressive verification, though it lacks the verified user badge popular on X and Instagram (which means an early adopter who grabbed the username of a famous person and kept it—a practice called handle squatting—could pretend to be that celeb). Bluesky has not announced any plans to add verification badges, but says that it’s working hard to ensure users are who they say they are, and that parody accounts—which are allowed—are labeled as such.

So it seems like a good time to get on Bluesky, doesn’t it?

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