Bluesky is in demand.
From celebrities like Chrissy Teigen to politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, people are making their way to Twitter’s newest social media rival, and at a faster pace than ever before. The company said in a Thursday post on its own platform that it had experienced the “biggest single-day jump in new users” ever, noting a twofold increase in users compared with the day before.
The surge in demand was so great that the service needed downtime to upgrade. The app is still only in its beta testing phase, and can only be downloaded with an invite from another user. Bluesky has been downloaded 375,000 times from the Apple app store worldwide since its launch in February, according to data.ai, a consumer data insights group.
Part of what may be driving the frenzy surrounding Bluesky may be the sheer frustration of Twitter users. The app has had a number of outages in the recent months, and in April, Twitter took blue check marks from verified accounts in favor of its paid-subscription-only model.
But Twitter’s fall from grace, and Bluesky’s rise in popularity, have more connections than one would think. The new, invite-only platform was actually funded by Twitter initially, the brainchild of cofounder Jack Dorsey, even before he became a vocal backer of Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase. And Musk reportedly ended the company’s ties with Bluesky when he took over Twitter.
Representatives at Bluesky and Twitter did not immediately return Fortune’s request for comment.
