The Measurement of the Microblogosphere (2025 Update)
From Nerdy Networks To Reinventing the “Town Square”
🪩 It’s 8:00 p.m. in Berlin — the city is glowing, the streets are buzzing, and the code is complaining. In New York, it’s 2:00 p.m. — brunch is ending, bugs are beginning. And in L.A., it’s 11:00 a.m. — caffeine, sunshine, and console warnings.
🖐️ This is Daniel, feeling both reflective and excited as we update our December 2023 deep dive on the state of text-based social media.
Back then, we pondered whether microblogging – the art of broadcasting short text posts to the world – was entering its twilight or simply evolving. Meta’s new app Threads was rising as a potential “Twitter-killer.”
🧠 What’s Inside this issue: A year and a half later, the microblogging landscape has shifted further. Let’s unravel the numbers, trends, and prospects of the microblogosphere in 2025.
1️⃣ The Microblogosphere by the Numbers 📊
How big is the text-based social media universe today? By stitching together data from various sources, we can measure the “microblogosphere” – encompassing Twitter (now X), Meta’s Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and other similar platforms – and see how it stacks up against the broader social media world:
X (formerly Twitter): Roughly 335–368 million monthly active users (MAUs) in 2023, down from a peak of ~368 million in 2022. Third-party analytics predicted usage could fall toward 250 million in 2024 amidst recent turbulence. (Elon Musk has claimed higher figures including “550 million monthly users”, but that likely counts visits or multiple accounts.) X remains the single largest microblogging network – for now.
Threads (Meta): An estimated 275–280 million users within its first year. Threads’ explosive launch in July 2023 saw it hit 100M sign-ups in 5 days. Though its active usage initially plummeted (80% drop to ~8M daily users by end of July 2023), steady growth resumed after web features and a December 2023 EU launch. By November 2024, Threads had surpassed 275 million users,
and Meta reported over 200 million monthly actives by mid 2024. In other words, Threads is already about a third of X’s size and closing in fast.
Bluesky: Initially an invite-only Twitter alternative backed by Jack Dorsey, Bluesky was small in 2023 (just 2.6 million users by year-end, per the CEO). But after opening up in late 2024, it experienced a meteoric rise. Bluesky’s API showed 15 million users in November 2024, rocketing to 25+ million by December 2024. As of mid-2025, Bluesky reports well over 37 million total accounts – remarkable growth, though active user counts are lower.
Mastodon (Fediverse): The decentralized Fediverse (led by Mastodon) saw waves of new sign-ups during each Twitter crisis. Mastodon grew from ~3.5M accounts pre-Musk to about 9 million by early 2023, and it now exceeds 14–15 million total users across 20,000+ servers. However, the active user base is a fraction of that – around 1 million monthly actives recentlythreads.com, down from a peak of 2.5M in late 2022. Other Fediverse platforms (Pixelfed, Misskey, etc.) contribute a few million more. In short, the whole Fediverse remains <20 million active users – a tiny niche relative to the big networks.
For context, here’s how these microblogging platforms compare to the heavyweights of social media:
Tier 1 Giants: Facebook (3.07 billion MAU), YouTube (2.5 billion MAU), WhatsApp (2+ billion), Instagram (2 billion MAU), WeChat (1.3B), and TikTok (1.6 billion MAU) dominate the landscape. These are the behemoths where billions of users engage monthly.
Tier 2 Players (~500M–1B users): Even a “smaller” platform can boast usage on par with a global phenomenon. TikTok itself was in this tier just a few years ago. Today, apps like Snapchat (850 million MAU as of 2025) and Spotify (600+ million monthly listeners) sit in this range. Candy Crush Saga, to pick an unlikely comparison, has reached 500 million users and over $20 billion in lifetime revenue – putting a decade-old mobile game in the same league as some social networks.
So is half a billion microbloggers a disappointment? 🤔 Not necessarily. With roughly 500–600 million combined users, the global microblogging audience is as large as many top-tier platforms. It’s Candy Crush-big. It’s Snapchat/Spotify-big. That scale is nothing to scoff at. In fact, for Meta’s Threads, being the dominant app in a half-billion-user category is strategically valuable. Meta already owns three of the top five social platforms (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram), so snagging the top spot in the next tier down would further solidify its empire. In other words, Meta sees microblogging as worth the investment – even if it’s a smaller pie than the multi-billion-user arenas – and Threads is its ticket.
Read Our First Style & Stitches Measurement of the Microblogosphere in December 2023:
Now, Back to 2025:2️⃣ From Twitter to X: A Platform in Flux 🌀
One reason the microblogosphere’s growth has stalled is the upheaval at its onetime flagship, Twitter. In late 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter and unleashed a whirlwind of changes. Over 2023, Twitter rebranded to “X”, laid off much of its staff, suffered frequent outages, reinstated previously banned accounts (from Donald Trump to Alex Jones), and reportedly lost billions in ad revenue due to loosening content moderation. Users and advertisers alike were unsettled by X’s new direction.
Despite (or perhaps thanks to) this chaos, competitors sprang up to capture disillusioned users. Decentralized options Mastodon and Bluesky were dubbed “Twitter clones”, but remained relatively small and “nerdy” enclaves. It was Meta’s Threads, launched in July 2023, that made the biggest splash – leveraging Instagram’s massive user base to sign up 100 million people in 5 days. For a moment, it seemed like X’s turmoil might rapidly flip the microblogging hierarchy.
However, early data suggested none of these alternatives significantly dented X’s dominance at first. In December 2023, analytics firm data.ai estimated X still had over 4× the monthly users of Threads + Bluesky + Mastodon combined. Another tracker found Mastodon and Bluesky were essentially “rounding errors” in terms of engagement compared to Twitter’s scale. Even Threads, after its sensational start, struggled with user retention: fewer than 1% of Threads users were opening the app daily in late 2023, versus 18% of Twitter users – and average time spent was just 3 minutes on Threads per day, versus 30 minutes on Twitter. This underscores that habits and network effects don’t change overnight, even if users create accounts elsewhere.
That said, X’s trajectory is concerning. According to data.ai’s report, Twitter’s (X’s) active user base peaked around July 2022 and then declined under Musk’s tenure. The prediction was for X to fall to roughly 250 million active users in 2024, which would be a nearly one-third drop from the pre-Musk peak. (For context, X’s own self-reported numbers – which likely count every login – are higher, but the trend of decline is widely acknowledged.) And as we’ve seen, Threads’ user count surged to the hundreds of millions in 2024, so the gap is closing. It’s entirely plausible that Threads could overtake X in active users within the next year if these trends continue.
Style & Stitches Verdict: The bottom line for X/Twitter: The platform remains the de facto hub of real-time news, politics, and influencer chatter (more on that below), but it’s fighting headwinds. Musk’s leadership introduced instability that rivals have exploited. Moreover, Twitter had longstanding business challenges even before Musk (it struggled to find a consistent profit model and advertiser growth), and those remain. Today X faces fiercer competition in a space it once owned, and it’s trying to innovate (or imitate) its way out – from paid verification to longer posts and even flirting with video content – to keep users engaged.
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A provocative thesis emerged in late 2023: Microblogging might just be… old-fashioned. In The Atlantic, tech writer Caroline Mimbs Nyce argued that “TikTok is eating microblogging as we’ve always known it.” Short-form video feeds, she noted, have captured the zeitgeist (especially among younger users) in a way that text timelines no longer do. Her sources painted a picture of text-based social networking becoming an increasingly niche pursuit in the age of algorithmically served video:
People are spending far more time on visual apps. As of late 2023, the average user spent 95 minutes per day on TikTok, and 61 minutes on Instagram, versus only 30 minutes on Twitter (and a mere 3 minutes on Threads). Short videos command attention like never before – an “attention vortex,” as Nyce put it.
In a Sprout Social consumer survey, 41% of respondents said they want brands to publish more 15–30 second videos, far more than those who wanted more text posts (10%). Audiences are literally asking for video content over text.
The cultural impact of viral text posts seems diminished. We used to see funny tweets screenshotted and shared widely; now it’s viral TikTok clips making the rounds on other platforms. As Georgia Tech professor André Brock observed, “TikTok videos are perhaps just a video version of what the original microblogs were doing when they first started in the mid-2000s.” In other words, the function of sharing bite-sized personal updates or jokes continues – but it’s often happening via video snippets rather than written quips.
Short text posts “en masse” might really be ending, Nyce muses – or at least evolving. The very concept of “microblogging” may need an update. Many of the conversational memes and trends that once lived on Twitter now thrive on TikTok or Instagram Reels. For example, that jokey trend about “men constantly thinking about the Roman Empire” went viral on TikTok in 2023; a decade ago, it might have been a Twitter thread.
This isn’t to say text-based communities will vanish entirely. Rather, the center of gravity in social media has shifted. Photo and video-first networks (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube) are where the largest growth and engagement are happening. Text-centric platforms, by comparison, feel comparatively stagnant or relegated to specific niches (news junkies, academics, certain subcultures).
Crucially, some functions of Twitter are hard to replicate elsewhere. Twitter became an invaluable real-time newswire – journalists and the public used it to monitor breaking news, elections, protests, and disasters in real time. That real-time text feed has been hard to replace; even as news is on TikTok, it’s not the same continuous scroll of instant updates. TikTok’s algorithm might show you a trending political video, but it could be from two weeks ago – not ideal for live event following. We saw this tension play out during Russia’s war on Ukraine (dubbed the first “TikTok War” for the flood of user videos) and we are likely to see it in the 2024 U.S. Presidential election as well. The election will test whether TikTok (and Instagram Reels) can play a role in real-time political discourse that Twitter once did, or whether users still turn to a text feed like X for up-to-the-minute developments. (Pew Research Center found in 2024 that 59% of X users cite political news as a key reason they use the platform, far higher than the share of TikTok or Instagram users who go there for politics. X remains a go-to for the politically engaged, even if TikTok’s overall audience is larger.)
The Style & Stitches Verdict: In summary, text-based social media is no longer the trendsetter – short video is. Microblogging as a mainstream consumer phenomenon peaked in the 2010s. Now, it’s either specialized (for news, tech, etc.) or it’s morphing into something that includes visuals and multimedia. The idea of quickly sharing what’s on your mind lives on, but the medium of choice is increasingly a camera rather than a keyboard.
Yes, But… Text Isn’t Dead (500 Million Candy Crushers Can’t Be Wrong) 🍬
Let’s challenge the doom-and-gloom a bit. Even if microblogging isn’t the hot new thing, the data shows hundreds of millions of people are still using it. Dismissing that audience would be like dismissing all of Snapchat or all of Spotify – or yes, all of Candy Crush – as irrelevant. Clearly, these users find value in text-centric sharing, even if they’re a minority relative to video app users.
500+ million users is a substantial market by any standard. Twitter/X’s user base, while down, is still roughly the size of a large country. The combined reach of Threads + X + other microblogs is on par with the second tier of social apps, as discussed. So rather than ask “is microblogging over?”, a more pragmatic question might be: what’s the potential for the microblogosphere from here?
Meta’s leadership certainly seems to believe the potential is significant. Why else build Threads? For Meta, which thrives on scale, having a foothold in the microblogging space (even if it tops out around 500M or so users) is strategically worthwhile. After all, Meta already occupies the #1, #3, and #5 spots globally (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram). Owning the “Twitter replacement” gives them another large community and keeps that audience from drifting to a competitor. If microblogging is like a Candy Crush–sized opportunity – hundreds of millions of engaged users and billions in potential revenue – Meta would rather own it than leave it to others. It’s a classic case of covering all bases.
Importantly, user interest in text hasn’t vanished; it’s just that their options have diversified. From my 15+ years analyzing online content consumption, one pattern stands out: when a new content format grows, it doesn’t usually kill the older formats – it just adds more hours to our media diet. People still read articles and text messages; they also watch videos and listen to podcasts. Each format serves different needs:
Short text posts vs. long text: It’s true that attention for long-form blogging or text-heavy content has waned in the face of video. But quick-hit textual content (tweets, status updates) scratch a different itch – immediacy, conversation, wit. Those who enjoy that haven’t all migrated to doing TikTok dances; they’re still tweeting or threading (and also watching TikToks – one doesn’t cancel the other).
The enduring appeal of messaging: Let’s not forget that the most popular form of digital text is private messaging (WhatsApp, iMessage, etc.), which is bigger than ever. People love text-based communication when it’s directly useful – coordinating with friends, work chats, etc. Public microblogging can be seen as an extension of that impulse (“I have something to say right now”), but broadcast to everyone. If microblogging can feel as easy and rewarding as texting, it will thrive. In fact, some social apps blur the lines – consider how Twitter DMs or Threads replies create semi-private back-and-forth conversations that feel a bit like group chat.
Form follows function: Users choose platforms based on what they’re trying to do. Need a laugh or a lifehack? TikTok/Reels. Want to vent a thought, share news, or live-comment an event? Twitter/Threads. The latter use case hasn’t disappeared from human behavior. As long as there’s a functional advantage to text (quick to create, easy to consume in low-bandwidth or eyes-busy situations), there’s a path for microblogging to grow again. For instance, if Threads or another app positions itself as an enhanced real-time discussion or news platform (rather than chasing TikTok’s entertainment role), it could attract more users who currently feel left out by video-centric apps.
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One reason Mastodon, Bluesky and others didn’t hit the mainstream instantly is what I like to call the “nerdy network” problem – they were too geeky or cumbersome for average users. This mirrors what happened with another medium: podcasting. Podcasts existed for ~15 years with slow growth because subscribing to RSS feeds or using clunky podcast apps felt like work. It wasn’t until platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts made listening as seamless as streaming music that podcasts truly broke into the mainstream. Suddenly, circa 2019–2020, everyone and their mother had a podcast in their pocket. The content didn’t drastically change; the accessibility did.
Similarly, early alternative microblogging platforms required users to jump through hoops: find an invite code, pick a server, learn a new interface, rebuild your follower list from scratch. Enthusiasts did it; most people didn’t. Mastodon, for example, offered a rich, decentralized experience – at the cost of a confusing signup and an empty initial feed for newcomers. Non-technical users often bounced off, finding it “too hard” or devoid of friends/content initially. Even Jack Dorsey’s Bluesky, while simpler, was invite-gated and therefore limited in network effects until recently.
Threads’ big advantage was leveraging Instagram to eliminate those friction points. By allowing instant sign-on with your Instagram account, Threads gave millions of users a pre-populated social graph (you could automatically follow the same accounts you followed on Insta). The result: on Day 1, your Threads feed was already full of content from people you know, without you doing any work. This “easy button” approach was huge for adoption. It replicated what made Twitter fun (a lively feed) without the manual effort of curating accounts to follow – something Twitter itself took years for users to personalize. Threads basically downloaded the “interest graph” from Instagram’s tree.
Beyond onboarding, Threads also benefited from not being Twitter in two key ways: no Elon Musk (i.e. no polarizing figure scaring off cautious users or brands) and no legacy baggage. Many people had grown weary of Twitter’s toxic aspects or Musk-era changes but still craved a Twitter-like space; Threads gave them a familiar yet (at the time) Musk-free zone. It’s telling that Threads’ early adopters skewed towards those disenchanted with Twitter but not quite sold on Mastodon/Bluesky’s geekiness.
Over 2024, Threads steadily improved by adding features that power users expect – an algorithm-free “Following” feed, robust search, hashtags, desktop access, and crucially, plans for ActivityPub integration (meaning Threads users can interact with the wider Fediverse). By late 2024, Meta began enabling limited federation, allowing Threads accounts to be discovered from Mastodon, etc. This move to embrace decentralization is unprecedented for a tech giant, and could be a game-changer: it means you might one day use Threads to follow anyone on Mastodon or other Fediverse platforms seamlessly. If Meta completes this integration, the Fediverse gets a usability upgrade (via Threads’ slick app and huge user base), and Threads gains geek cred plus more content – a mutually beneficial bridge. Some Fediverse die-hards remain skeptical (fearing Meta’s entry as an “embrace, extend, extinguish” ploy), but many acknowledge the influx of users could finally push decentralized social into the mainstream.
In short, the microblogging contenders that “made it” are those that lowered the barrier to entry and felt immediately useful to new users. Threads did this best. It’s no coincidence that I predicted back in 2023 that “by April 2024, Threads will be the number one microblogging platform.” That didn’t fully materialize by that date – X still held a lead – but Threads has certainly secured the number two spot and is on a trajectory that could make it #1 in the not-too-distant future. The lesson: convenience and network effects win. The more Threads (or any platform) can make microblogging feel like an effortless extension of what users already do (as Flipboard is attempting by becoming an open directory for Fediverse content, for example), the more the microblogosphere can grow.
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As we stand today, the microblogosphere is at an inflection point. It’s no longer the new shiny object of social media – short video stole that crown – but it’s far from obsolete. Instead, it’s evolving and splintering:
X/Twitter is doubling down on being an “everything app” for its loyalists – incorporating long-form posts, live audio, subscriptions, and even financial services under Musk’s vision – while trying to retain its core identity as the real-time town square. Whether this broad strategy will stabilize X’s user base (or monetize it better) remains to be seen. For now, it still has the critical mass in news and politics, as Pew data confirms, but its mass-market appeal has faded.
Threads is likely to keep growing, especially internationally (it launched in the EU in late 2023 and saw a surge there). Meta’s challenge now is to deepen engagement – get those hundreds of millions of sign-ups to actually stick around and post. That means cultivating a distinct culture or use-case for Threads. Instagram integration gave Threads a head start, but Threads needs its own identity to thrive (just as Instagram itself differentiated from Facebook). Will it be the hub for zeitgeist conversations and pop culture chatter? A safe space for brands and creators (leveraging Meta’s moderation and advertiser-friendly policies)? A companion to Instagram where trends can be discussed in text? Meta is likely experimenting with all of the above. The key will be helping users find value: reasons to open Threads app in addition to their other apps. If they crack that, Threads could truly dethrone X.
Alternative networks like Mastodon and Bluesky will coexist, catering to users who value decentralization or specific community vibes. Mastodon’s fediverse might grow through the backdoor of Threads’ ActivityPub support – an ironic twist where a Big Tech platform onboards users into a decentralized ecosystem. Bluesky, with 25M+ users, has grown out of its niche somewhat and could see more mainstream adoption if it introduces features like an algorithmic feed or easier discovery. These platforms likely won’t rival X or Threads in size, but collectively they ensure the microblogosphere isn’t controlled by a single corporation anymore. There’s an ecology forming: one where your “town square” might be one of several, and bridges between them (through protocols or cross-posting) become important.
Content evolution: We might see microblogging posts themselves become richer – more images, short clips, and interactive elements – blurring with the visual-first platforms. X now allows longer video for paid users, and Threads supports short videos and is integrating more media options. The straightforward text tweet isn’t the only game in town; the micro part might soon refer to bite-sized content in any format (text, image, or video) that facilitates conversation. Imagine Threads or X leaning into being the place you discuss the viral TikTok you just watched, for instance, rather than trying to replicate that TikTok within their own app.
Finally, it’s worth remembering that social media trends are cyclical. What’s old often becomes new again. Ten years ago, everyone thought Facebook was in decline as teens flocked to Snapchat – but Facebook’s still here with 3 billion users. Likewise, microblogging might find a second wind as the pendulum swings.
Style & Stitches Trend-Alert: If short-form video becomes oversaturated or trust in algorithmic feeds declines, people might seek more direct, unfiltered communication – which is exactly what Twitter pioneered. In an era of AI-generated content and deepfakes, the value of a quick, authentic status update from a real person you follow might even increase.
Style & Stitches Verdict: The microblogosphere of 2025 is smaller than the video-dominated social sphere, but it’s not shrinking into irrelevance – it’s reorganizing. Threads’ rise suggests a large chunk of people still crave a text-based, conversational social experience if it’s delivered right. The decline of one giant (Twitter) opened space for innovation and perhaps a healthier, more distributed network of microblogging communities. We’re witnessing the measurement of a new microblogosphere – one that is measured not just in raw user counts, but in the diversity of platforms and models it encompasses.
The journey continues, and I, for one, am keeping my character count under 500 and my expectations high. 🚀