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THREAD The numbers are in. @bsky.app research sharing volumes vs X Formerly Twitter In March 2024, on most days, Bluesky hosts more posts linked to research published in 2025 than X. By quite a lot. Release the Kraken... #AcademicSky #HigherEd #Altmetrics 1/11

You might be coming to this thread without knowing who we are and what we do. Altmetric monitors and tracks how research papers (articles, datasets, sadly NOT the dank memes this account cranks out) are shared on the web. We look in News, blogs, Wiki pages, policy docs, and yes...social media 2/11

Since Twitter was bought, rebranded and its algorithm heavily reshaped, academia, and the people closely following academia have sought additional or replacement homes on other services. Bluesky, although coming later to the party than Mastodon, has won out as the de facto location. 3/11

As we noted at the time, the speed of the move by academic communities to new platforms was aided by the fact that the communities were already fully formed and Bluesky allows for the importing of posts, and therefore the old footprints from Twitter were not lost. bsky.app/profile/alt... 4/11

Per resident data ninjas at Altmetric @herrison2000.bsky.social and Carlos Areia (who isn't on Bluesky and therefore has been fired): "Both Bluesky and X are home to rich and valuable research conversations, but it looks like the days of X’s dominance are over." 6/11

Here are two pie charts that show the baseline differences in sharing behaviour for research items on the two platforms. There seems to be a higher proportion of original posts on Bluesky than X. 7/11

I'd guess this has something to do with likes not being boosted by Bluesky.

Also - Mondays and Fridays are particularly busy for Bluesky. At weekends, X is more active, and this leads to a levelling off of the weekly averages. One of these communities touches grass. Guess which. 8/11