The news: Social microblogging service Bluesky is pivoting away from its plan of being a competitor to X and Threads and is instead looking at Reddit for inspiration, per CNBC.

Bluesky, which modeled itself as an open-source alternative to X, enjoyed an initial surge of interest and signups after Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 but has recently experienced sharp declines in usage and engagement.

• Daily posters fell 57% from a late 2024 peak of 1.4 million to around 600,000 this week, per a metrics tracker from a former engineering lead at Bluesky.
• Bluesky’s US unique mobile visitors fell sharply from 2.7 million in June 2025 to 1.5 million in March 2026, a drop of 44% in nine months, per Comscore data provided to EMARKETER.

Why it’s worth watching: Reddit’s success as an online community destination has spurred competition from multiple platforms, including Meta, which is testing a new Forum app as a vehicle for community discussions.

Bluesky COO Rose Wang told CNBC that the company is taking inspiration from Reddit and hopes to transform into a “discovery mechanism” because the “public square” feed model is dead. 

Bluesky also wants to modernize its video features, a highly competitive segment dominated by TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. Wang told CNBC the platform is working to improve video upload speeds as well as the length of videos that can be uploaded.

Implications for brands: The social microblogging space has become a two-horse race with no space for a third option like Bluesky. 

Social companies seeking to compete with Reddit will find its community trust and search growth difficult to match. Bluesky has no ad model, no sales team, and no performance infrastructure, unlike Reddit, which monetizes communities natively. That means its pivot will rely entirely on organic community stickiness—exactly what it’s losing.

While Wang said the company hasn’t ruled out ads, brands shouldn’t expect scalable, targeted inventory in the near future.