Bluesky Woos Swifties

Since Donald Trump’s election win, Bluesky has gained 2 million users, or 15%, attracting both disillusioned left-leaning X users and a growing community of Taylor Swift fans, or Swifties

On Bluesky, nearly 13,000 individuals have registered with the domain name “swifties.social,” which suggests their participation in the Taylor Swift fan community. Other fandoms for artists such as Beyoncé (approximately 900 members) and BTS (approximately 4,500 members) have also emerged.

These fan-driven domains, which are integrated into the primary Bluesky social server, resulted from a project that Bluesky developer Samuel Newman initiated in May 2023, prior to his employment with the company.

(Prior to his employment at Bluesky, Newman was also responsible for the third-party client Graysky.) Newman’s utility enables any individual to claim subdomain handles from your domain.

For instance, Newman acquired “kawaii.social,” which currently has approximately 450 members. We could conceivably acquire the domain “techcrunch.kawaii.social” using his tool; however, it may not be as consistent with our brand as our current “techcrunch.com” handle.

“It has taken off in unexpected ways.” The tool was initially created to provide users with a “bsky.london” handle or a similar option.

However, it has since been discovered that the handle is an excellent indicator of the type of account, and stan accounts are particularly fond of the ability to self-identify in this manner. Newman disclosed this information to TechCrunch via Bluesky DM.

Initially, the swifties.social domain experienced minimal growth, with approximately 2,000 users joining until August 2024, when X was temporarily prohibited in Brazil.

As per Newman, “Bluesky experienced an immense surge in Brazilian users, including numerous Swifties.” “The tool gained popularity, resulting in nearly 8,000 handles claimed.” Then, following the election, an additional influx of Swifties arrived, and the tool once again went viral, increasing to 12,800!

The surge of growth in Brazilian users occurred when Newman introduced handles for Beyoncé fans (beyhive.social) and BTS fans (army.social).

In the broader scheme of things, the number of users with these fan domains is a mere fraction of Bluesky’s 16 million users (and counting). However, fan communities are frequently the driving force behind the success of a social network.

In the early 2010s, Tumblr experienced a surge in popularity as a result of the fandoms of television programs such as “Supernatural” and “Doctor Who,” as well as bands like One Direction.

Bluesky has maintained a reputation for maintaining highly engaged users, despite the fact that these demographics are typically very active social media users, even if a community is small.

“We have a higher proportion of posters than the majority of social media platforms, which adhere to a 90-9-1 pattern of lurkers, commenters, and posters.” “We have not fallen below approximately 30% posters,” stated Bluesky CEO Jay Graber in a post on Tuesday.