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The hunt for the next Twitter: all the news about alternative social media platforms

It&rsquo;s been more than two years since Elon Musk officially took over as the owner of Twitter &mdash; now X &mdash; and while a lot of platforms rushed in to try and be the next big microblogging service, many haven&rsquo;t survived. Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky have all proven to be viable alternatives, but places like Pebble (formerly T2) and Post News didn&rsquo;t make it.
Threads is perhaps the likely successor, having reached 275 million monthly users as of October 2024, and it seems committed to fediverse integration by building features around the ActivityPub protocol. Bluesky, which relies on its own decentralized AT Protocol for social networking, continues to grow and saw a surge of users after the 2024 election, though with somewhere north of 14.5 million users, it&rsquo;s still well behind Threads. Mastodon, which also uses the ActivityPub protocol, was already well-established by the time Musk bought Twitter but has struggled to grow its active user base.
There still isn&rsquo;t a clear successor to Twitter. X hasn&rsquo;t become the massive &ldquo;everything app&rdquo; that Musk says he wants it to be. But despite the success of Threads, continued existence of Mastodon, and the growth of Bluesky, X is still the place where many people and companies post things before they go anywhere else &mdash; at least, for now.
Here&rsquo;s our coverage of the alternatives to X.

Will an app or a protocol be the next big thing?

Bluesky’s getting group chats.

Bluesky wants to move away from being a “public square.”

Now blog posts can cross the fediverse.

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber will step aside

Mastodon snags Bluesky’s starter packs feature and includes the ability to opt out

Threads adds communities to put your interests front and center

Bluesky can really keep up with the news now that it has activity notifications

Bluesky is testing a new ‘live’ indicator for streamers and sports

Bluesky is having an up and down Tuesday morning

Bluesky is back up after a major outage

Bluesky gets a revamped search page and emoji reactions in DMs

The New Yorker profiled Bluesky CEO Jay Graber.

April Fools’ 2025: Bluesky chops its character count.

Nintendo’s news app struggled to deliver the Zelda movie info.

Barack Obama has joined Bluesky.

Bluesky’s “world without Caesars” shirt sold out in 30 minutes.

Bluesky has ads now.

Tweetbot’s developers are making a Bluesky app

Instagram for Bluesky is here.

Bluesky now lets users restrict replies to followers

Bluesky now has 30 million users.

Bluesky adds a video tab to user profiles.

NFL teams can’t use Bluesky

Bluesky’s 2024 moderation report is out.

Bluesky is getting a video-first app called Flashes.

Free Our Feeds wants to build a social media ecosystem ‘resistant to billionaire influence’

Bluesky adds Trending topics to its arsenal

Bluesky now has a mentions tab in your notifications area

Threads starts testing scheduled posts

Fediverse creator payment platform sub.club is shutting down

Instagram’s head says social media needs more context because of AI

Threads takes an important baby step toward true fediverse integration

Threads’ next update is a search feature that finds the post you’re looking for

Bluesky won’t use your posts for AI training, but can it stop anyone else?

Bluesky is working on addressing the EU’s DSA complaints.

Threads says 35 million users signed up in November

Threads is testing the option to choose your own default feed

Bluesky is breaking the rules in the EU

Threads.com shows something now.

The Bluesky firehose, tunnelized.

Twitter’s heir apparent isn’t X or Threads — it’s Bluesky

Threads is overhauling its search and trending features

Threads’ custom feeds are already rolling out

Bluesky now has more than 20 million users.

Mastodon is growing, too.

Bluesky moves deeper into moderation hell.

Here’s some cool stuff you can do with Bluesky

Bluesky says it won’t train AI on your posts

Bluesky’s quest to be the next Twitter

Bluesky is having its “highest traffic day ever.”

Stephen King is taking a stand.

Bluesky apparently acted up today because of a cut fiber cable

Threads grew by a Bluesky this month

You can now use your itch.io URL as your username on Bluesky.

Threads might get ads early next year

Don Lemon says he’s leaving X.

Bluesky crosses the 15 million user mark

Bluesky is almost at 15 million users.

One million people have joined Bluesky in the past week.

Hello Bluesky.

Bluesky adds 700,000 new users in a week

Seems a lot of people are flocking to Bluesky.

How to deactivate your X account

Mastodon instance botsin.space is shutting down.

The Verge’s favorite social networks

A TikTok alternative called Loops is coming for the fediverse

Bluesky says it won’t use blockchains even though it’s funded by Blockchain Capital.

Bluesky is working on a subscription, but it won’t give you a blue check

Threads can now show you when people in your feed are online

Bluesky pitches new features at disgruntled Threads users

Mastodon switches things up to make its app a little easier to use

Meta appears to own Threads dot com now.

Mozilla will shut down its Mastodon server on December 17th.

Bluesky adds 8 million users in last ten months.

You might start seeing Instagram comments on Threads soon

How to cross-post your Threads posts to the fediverse

Does Threads have the wrong vibe for the displaced Brazilian internet?

Bluesky has gained a million new users in the last three days.

Brazil’s X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky

Bluesky is getting video with its “next major app update.”

Bluesky adds ‘anti-toxicity’ options to limit dogpiling and hostile quote posts

Threads is giving Fleets a shot.

Mike Masnick is joining Bluesky’s board of directors.

Mastodon rolls out built-in bylines for journalists in the fediverse

Bluesky will let you suggest “starter packs” of friends and feeds to follow.

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