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Blueskyhas grown by2 million users — about 15 % — since Donald Trump won the U.S. election last week . But the emerge social platform is n’t just acting as a resort for left - leaning X users who are disappointed in Elon Musk’salliancewith the President of the United States - elect . A community of interests of Taylor Swift fans , or Swifites , has also lay its foundation on the decentralised social app .
Almost 13,000 people on Bluesky have sign up with a “ swifties.social ” domain name , indicating their interest in the Taylor Swift fan community . Other fandom for artists likeBeyoncé(about 900 fellow member ) andBTS(about 4,500 members ) have also emerged .
These fan - driven domains , which run within the principal Bluesky societal waiter , came from a labor that Bluesky developerSamuel Newmanmade in May 2023 , before he was hired by the company . ( Newman was also behind the third - party clientGrayskybefore he let a job at Bluesky . ) Newman ’s puppet allows anyone to arrogate subdomain hold from a world that you own . For exercise , Newman bribe “ kawaii.social , ” which now has about 450 members . Using his tool , we could technically snatch up “ techcrunch.kawaii.social ” as our domain , but alas , that might not be as consistent with our brand as our current “ techcrunch.com ” handle .
“ It ’s taken off in mode I did n’t expect . I originally made the tool mean people might want a ‘ bsky.london ’ handle or something like that , but it turn out that the handle is a heavy signal for what kind of account you are , and stan accounts utterly love being able to self - describe themselves like that , ” Newman told TechCrunch via Bluesky DM .
The swifties.social domain did n’t see much growth at first , with about 2,000 substance abuser joining until August 2024 , when X was temporarilybanned in Brazil .
“ Bluesky contract an tremendous influx of Brazilian exploiter , include many Swifties , ” Newman say . “ The tool went viral , jump to nearly 8,000 handles claimed . Then , after the election , yet another wave of Swifties arrived and the shaft went viral again , jumping to 12,800 ! ”
That waving of growth from Brazilian user was when Newman added handles for BTS devotee ( army.social ) and Beyoncé fans ( beyhive.social ) .
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In the grand scheme of thing , users with these fan domains only make up a petite fraction of Bluesky ’s 16 million users ( and count ) . But fan community are often what makes a social web run ; in the former 2010s , Tumblr boomed in part due to fandoms for television set shows like “ Supernatural ” and “ Doctor Who , ” as well as bands like One Direction . Even if a residential area is small , these cohorts run to be very active social media users , and Bluesky thus far has prided itself on its power to hold highly engaged user .
“ We … have a mellow percentage of posters than most societal sites , which follow a 90 - 9 - 1 pattern of lurkers - commenters - poster . We have n’t dipped below ~30 % posters , ” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber wrote in aposton Tuesday .
