Social community Bluesky is updating its app to enable anybody to share once they’re livestreaming on Twitch, and including specialised hashtags, often called cashtags, for discussing publicly traded shares.
The brand new options might doubtlessly assist Bluesky capitalize on a current enhance in new installs, which have arrived within the days after the X deepfake information went mainstream.
On X, customers had been asking its built-in AI bot Grok to show images of actual ladies and generally minors into sexualized photos with out consent. This week, California’s lawyer basic opened an investigation into xAI’s chatbot over the proliferation of the “nonconsensual sexually express materials.”
Within the wake of the controversy, Bluesky noticed its downloads surge within the U.S. In keeping with new knowledge from market intelligence supplier Appfigures, every day downloads of Bluesky’s iOS app have jumped almost 50% from the interval earlier than information of the deepfakes reached vital mass.
The agency says Bluesky sometimes sees round 4,000 installs within the U.S. per day, however from December 30, 2025, by way of January 6, 2026, Bluesky’s iOS downloads within the U.S. totaled round 19,500. From January 7, 2026, by way of January 14, downloads grew to 29,000 — a 49% improve.
In the meantime, cashtags will enable the app to catch as much as certainly one of X’s extra fashionable use instances: discussing shares. To create a cashtag, you place a greenback image earlier than the inventory ticker image (e.g., $AAPL for Apple).
The thought for cashtags was first launched by stocks-focused social community Stocktwits, which now has over 10 million customers, earlier than the tags had been later adopted by Twitter in 2012.
As well as, Bluesky says it’s increasing entry to the “Stay Now” experimental function that lets customers add a brief “LIVE” badge to their avatar to point once they’re streaming on-line. At present, this function solely helps Twitch and doesn’t enable anybody to go stay straight on Bluesky itself.
The enhance in exercise on Bluesky comes after the community noticed declines in downloads and utilization final 12 months. In April 2025, Appfigures famous that the social networking startup’s downloads dropped to new lows, and every day common customers on cellular units had declined almost 40% by the top of October, per Similarweb knowledge. Pew Analysis reported final 12 months that a lot of influencers now have Bluesky accounts, however they nonetheless are inclined to submit extra frequently on X.
This implies that the switching prices are greater than some would count on in terms of swapping out one real-time social community for one more. Including new options will solely be a part of the battle for Bluesky; it should additionally should discover a approach to get customers to alter years of ingrained conduct.
