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Blue Skies Ahead

People are leaving X for Bluesky

X is still ahead by a lot.

11/13/24 11:09AM

Bluesky is currently the most-downloaded free app on the App Store in the US, followed by Threads, as Americans leave X thanks in part to owner Elon Musk’s role in Donald Trump’s election. The day after the election, 115,000 US users deactivated their accounts, according to data from Similarweb.

Bluesky is the most downloaded free app on Apple App Store — App Store, Wednesday, November 13, 2024

And, in the week since the election, a million users have joined Bluesky, which currently has a total of 15 million users — more than double what it was three months ago.

The change is palpable on Bluesky, where the latest migration — or those simply returning after reverting to X once again — of users are proclaiming their allegiance to the X alternative.

But while Bluesky is certainly growing swiftly, it has a long way to go. It still has about a quarter of the daily active users that Meta’s Threads does:

And it still pales in comparison to X’s usership. Even with all of Bluesky’s growth — and X’s deactivations — X remains the dominant X alternative. It currently has 28x the daily active app users of Bluesky in the US.

Millie Giles16h

The most popular male and female names in the US, according to the latest Census

New data published Tuesday by the US Census Bureau has revealed the most common names provided in the 2020 Census, in the first release to include forename data since 1990.

As described in the brief, Michael was the most popular name for males in the US, with roughly 3.5 million American men reporting having this name or a close variant. This is up from fourth place in the 1990 Census, when the top US male name was James — though there were still 3 million Jameses in 2020’s tally.

Despite a three-decade gap, Mary remained the top name for American females in both censuses, with the 2020 survey counting almost 1.8 million females with this given name. Interestingly, Mary was one of just two predominantly female names that broke the top 10 given names in the US, with the overall list dominated mostly by male monikers.

Most popular names US census 2020 chart — Sherwood News

In all, American females had far more first-name diversity than male counterparts: 16% of US males had one of the top 10 most frequent names among men, compared with 7.8% of women. Zooming out, almost 3x as many given names were needed to cover a quarter of the US female population than that of males.

Max Knoblauch & Tom Jones4/14/26

6 months after hiking Game Pass prices by 50%, Xbox determines it may be too expensive

Microsoft’s new Xbox chief, Asha Sharma, thinks the division’s recent price hikes have been a mistake, per an internal memo to employees seen by The Verge.

“Short term, Game Pass has become too expensive for players, so we need a better value equation,” Sharma’s memo reportedly read.

It’s an interesting take, given that Xbox hiked the price of its Game Pass subscription by 50% in October, before Sharma took over. The memo is a signal that Sharma’s tenure — which began in February, taking the industry by surprise — will include some big changes for Microsoft’s gaming strategy.

Whether Game Pass prices will drop is not yet clear. Last month, The Information reported that Sharma and Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters have “kicked around ideas” about potential bundles. That would fit with Netflix’s renewed gaming ambitions.

Xbox Game Pass ‘has become too expensive,’ says Microsoft’s new gaming chief in leaked memo

Millie Giles

LIFELINE

4/14/26

Will a resolve to reduce screen time see a revival of landline telephones?

For parents trying to limit their kids’ exposure to smartphones, the answer could be yesterday’s tech.

Millie Giles

IN THE GREEN

4/13/26

Rory McIlroy just secured a second consecutive Masters title — and the biggest prize pot to date

Winning a sixth major title in the year of a record purse, McIlroy is now the Masters’ highest-earning golfer.

Max Knoblauch4/13/26

Roblox announces age-based accounts for young users as child safety lawsuits pile up

Roblox on Monday announced its first accounts created specifically for young children and teens, furthering its efforts to increase child safety on the platform.

In June, Roblox Kids (for ages 5 to 8) and Roblox Select (for ages 9 to 15) will roll out, following the company’s global launch of mandatory age checks in January.

The new account types will feature different default settings — chats will automatically be set to “off” on Kids accounts — and limit access to games of certain ratings depending on age.

Child safety lawsuits and social media bans are piling up for Roblox, whose shares have dropped more than 30% year to date. In February, Los Angeles County sued the platform, alleging it created a “largely unsupervised online world” in which “child predators can readily locate, contact, and interact with minors.”

Roblox Introduces New Age-Based Accounts and Expanded Parental Controls for Users Under 16

Roblox gaming platform says it is ready to make changes to get Russian ban lifted