Bluesky has been in the tech press quite a lot lately, most notably for passing a fairly important milestone: more than 40 million registered users. The platform, born out of an experiment in decentralized social networking by former Twitter cofounder and CEO Jack Dorsey, marked the achievement in late October 2025 as it continued to roll out product experiments to refine feed personalization.
That growth hasn’t been overnight. Bluesky’s surge accelerated after late 2024 following turbulence at several mainstream platforms; the service went from millions to tens of millions in a matter of months, with regional boosts in North America, Western Europe and parts of East Asia driving much of the increase.
So: can Bluesky realistically join the ranks of social media giants such as Meta, X, or TikTok? The answer is “maybe,” but with important caveats. On one hand, hitting 40 million registered users demonstrates product-market fit beyond niche early adopters. What makes Bluesky so attractive to its user base is its decentralized architecture, which allows apps to interoperate across the AT Protocol, and promises portability of identity and followers. This is a clear differentiator that attracts developers, creators and users seeking an alternative model to centralized algorithm-driven feeds. That long-term vision, championed by Bluesky’s leadership, positions it as more than a fleeting competitor.
On the other hand, raw registered-user counts don’t tell the whole story. Several reports show that while registrations soared, measures of active engagement such as daily posts, likes and other meaningful interactions have been volatile or declining since their peak in late 2024 and early 2025. A platform becomes a “giant” not simply by sign-ups but by habitual usage, advertising scale, creator monetization, and network effects that keep both users and businesses coming back. Bluesky still needs to prove it can sustain high levels of daily engagement.
There are also regulatory and operational hurdles that go along with an increased user base. In Europe, for instance, rules under the Digital Services Act create thresholds and disclosure obligations that kick in at very large scales, and those requirements shape how a company grows and governs content in a heavily regulated market. Bluesky is now approaching thresholds that would increase regulatory scrutiny. How it navigates those obligations will have a big effect on its continued growth.
The encouraging signs are hard to dismiss though. Studies and reporting show niche communities (most notably researchers, scientists, and other professional clusters) are big drivers of high-quality engagement on Bluesky – something you find less and less of on some of the big legacy social platforms. That kind of concentrated value can make the platform indispensable for specific audiences even if it remains smaller overall. If Bluesky can translate those pockets of high-quality interaction into broader mainstream use (and viable business models for creators and advertisers), it could be the “next big thing”.
Ultimately, whether Bluesky becomes a true “giant” will depend on three things: (1) sustained user engagement and retention – not just registrations; (2) an ecosystem of apps and monetization paths that reward creators and advertisers; and (3) robust, scalable governance and compliance as it grows internationally. Its decentralized architecture and recent user expansion are promising building blocks, but there is still a long and bumpy road ahead between being a fast-growing challenger to a global social-media behemoth.
For now, 40 million is a milestone worth celebrating- and a reminder that the social web remains unsettled and open to newcomers. Whether Bluesky’s model becomes the next mainstream paradigm or a powerful niche alternative is still an open question, but it’s one that we and the industry will be watching very closely.
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