Bluesky’s growing status as the social media platform of choice for the world’s scientists has been boosted by analysis suggesting research receives more engagement and original scrutiny than on Elon Musk’s rival platform, X.
A study examining 2.6m Bluesky posts referencing more than 500,000 scholarly articles over the past two and a half years found they demonstrated “substantially higher levels of interaction” – likes, reposts, replies and quotes – and greater “textual originality” than previously reported for X, formerly Twitter.
It comes with the fledgling platform battling reports of a decline in its active user base and activity in recent months. Bluesky had enjoyed a huge boom in new users after Musk’s takeover of X and Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
However, the scientific community appears to have embraced Bluesky. It is understood that during August there were twice as many posts about science each day compared with July and more than triple the number from March, though the platform remains tight-lipped about the overall numbers of such posts.
A study suggests proper engagement is the key to the favour Bluesky has found among scientists. A team predominantly from the UK’s Sheffield University found that almost half the scientific posts on Bluesky received at least 10 likes, while a third were reposted 10 or more times. Previous research has shown those metrics were far lower on X, with up to 4.4% receiving 10 or more reposts.
Meanwhile, quotes – where users make their own comments about a post – were higher on Bluesky, as were replies to scientific work. Only 6.3% simply mentioned the article name and journal, suggesting deeper engagement. The study has not yet been peer reviewed.
Er-Te Zheng, one of the study’s authors, said: “After the sharp rise in late 2024, Bluesky’s scholarly discussion has remained consistently high, and recently it has hosted a similar level of scholarly discussion as X, sometimes even more.
“Our study shows that scholarly posts on Bluesky are not only more original but also receive stronger engagement than on X, already making it a credible platform for science communication. What strikes me personally is how much ‘purer’ the scientific discussion feels on Bluesky: my feed is almost entirely filled with researchers and journals, unlike the more mixed content on X.”
Bluesky has grown rapidly since its launch in 2023, driven by huge political events such as Trump’s return. It now has more than 38 million users. However, the number of daily active users, likes and posts has been falling since its peak in the autumn of 2024.
Its high level of scientific discussion follows a concerted attempt by leading science communicators to form a sustainable community on the platform.
“We had a large community on science Twitter, where I was very active for 15 years,” said Tara C Smith, a professor of epidemiology at Kent State University College of Public Health in the US. “Engagement dropped off dramatically and the number of troll and bot responses increased. It just became a useless platform to me, despite having about 130,000 followers at my peak.
“At Bluesky, though it’s significantly smaller, I can have good discussions with people who are interested in my area as well as fellow experts. It serves the same purpose as SciTwitter as far as keeping up with new research, but also is far more amenable to conversation.”
David Shiffman, a marine conservation biologist, was another early adopter of social media for science engagement. He said he switched to Bluesky after becoming concerned about conspiracy theories on X. “Bluesky isn’t better than Twitter ever was, but it’s a hell of a lot better than Twitter is now,” he said.
Andrew Thaler, a deep sea biologist with 38,000 Bluesky followers, said: “The community is platform agnostic, they really don’t care what platform you are on. What matters is where the people are. So it was about making sure people moved over and the community continued to flourish. Science on Bluesky is kind of the best part of Bluesky. A smaller social network is not necessarily a negative. The engagement is tremendous.”
