Awful Announcing: Sports media's migration from X to Bluesky has accelerated post-election

[Dennis Donovan]

Awful Announcing - Sports media’s migration from X to Bluesky has accelerated post-election

"It doesn’t feel required to be on Twitter anymore."



By Sean Keeley on 11/14/2024

Wednesday was a pretty fun day on Bluesky, especially if you’re someone who’s been on Twitter/X long enough to remember when it too was fun.

Established users of the social media app spent the day welcoming new arrivals with messages about how this was the panacea they were looking for. They shared “Starter Packs” to help newbies find their old friends and good follows. They made it clear that 2024 Bluesky is nothing like 2024 X. Better yet, that 2024 Bluesky actually resembles 2012 Twitter.

The excitement there is palpable. The app went from having a little over 6 million users to 15 million in the last 90 days and hit number one in the iOS App Store this week. That’s a far cry from the 335 million active users on X, but according to Similarweb, 115,000 US-based web visitors deactivated their X accounts after Election Day and that company’s user base and appeal are in decline.

“The current owner of Twitter’s politics aside, his role in the recent election aside, the ways he has changed the platform aside, I think Twitter peaked probably 5-10 years ago, period,” The Athletic’s Howard Beck said on the Sports Media with Richard Deitsch podcast this week.

/snip/

Those new arrivals run the gamut, from ESPN’s Mina Kimes, Sarah Spain, and Benjamin Solak to Meadowlark Media’s Pablo Torre to FS1’s Rachel Nichols to The Athletic’s Nate Tice to The Ringer’s Danny Kelly. The sports media influx seemed to touch every major sports outlet and organization.

/snip

[Zeitghost]

1. We will never reach swing voters

Inside walled gardens.

[Dennis Donovan]

2. Do you remember Twitter before the Musk takeover?

It was a town square for many. No walls, just annoying bots here and there. But, if you used it as a news and politics aggregate, it was invaluable. Bluesky is attempting to be something akin to that.

[Zeitghost]

4. Twitter is what you make it

Creating a separate system dedicated to one specific view intended for one specific audience is fine. But it's not a way for the people in that community to win over new supporters, which is kind of the point of politics and one of the reasons we are where we are here in November of 2024.

Meanwhile the vast majority of the public will go on using X and our message will be absent or at best diminished.


People seriously underestimated what is being referred to now as the Joe Rogan Effect, although it involved far more than Rogan. Trumps late rise in the polls corresponds directly to when he began to appear on popular podcasts that were not political in nature. Sports podcasts, pro wrestling podcasts, comedy podcasts, etc. His Rogan interview alone likely reached 100 million people across all platforms, either as clips or in long form.

Reports are now coming out that the Harris campaign declined Rogan out of fear. Not fear of Rogan, not fear of not being able to do multiple hours off the cuff, not fear of his audience; but fear over backlash from within the Democratic party for "legitimizing" Rogan. We have created a climate where opportunities to reach tens of millions of largely apolitical, working class and middle class people is unacceptable because the source does not fit our purity test.

So we go on building walls around our community so that bad noise doesn't get in, all while failing to realize good noise doesn't get out.

[Dennis Donovan]

5. VP Harris passing on Rogan was a big mistake

So I agree. I'm speaking about Bluesky only as a news and political aggregate.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. anyone can join Bluesky