Camille Charrière joined X — then Twitter — in 2011. The editor and influencer had far fewer followers on the platform than she eventually did on Instagram — around 15,000 compared to 1.4 million — but she says it was her favourite form of social media for a long time.
“When trying to make sense of something, whether it was a fashion show, a film, or a piece of pop culture, I would always go to Twitter. It was where all the intelligent discourse happened first, and then everybody would report on what was being said there.”
One of the most appealing parts of X for the fashion community was its distance from feeling like a platform used as an extension of work in the sense of being beholden to brands — or a brand yourself. There, fashion fans would share personal viewpoints on shows, collections and industry gossip. They’d post memes, share criticism and engage in lengthy commentary with other similar industry obsessives.
It’s where revered critic Vanessa Friedman sounded off about influencers being given prime seats at Gucci, where said influencers defend their position in the industry, where The Row’s phone ban was first revealed and discussed and where potential creative director hires are still being debated.
But in light of X owner Elon Musk’s role first in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and now his administration, Charrière wrote a statement declaring she’d be leaving X for good. Influencer and fashion editor Brenda Weischer is leaving the platform as well. They follow in the footsteps of Balenciaga, the first major fashion house to eschew the site, in October 2022 (the month Musk took over), alongside more than 115,000 others who reportedly closed their accounts on 6 November.
Under Musk, X has loosened its policies against hate speech and overall content moderation, moving away from suspending reported accounts or deleting posts. It’s part of Musk’s embrace of free speech ideology — and can make for a difficult landscape to navigate for brands. “X has become a much more risky proposition,” says social media consultant and industry analyst Matt Navarra.
X’s way forward
Currently, most luxury fashion houses are continuing to use X regularly, including Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Dior, Prada, and Miu Miu, all of which share at least once — usually multiple times — daily. “Despite the user losses and the transformation of the platform into a politically charged space, engagement on X has been surprisingly resilient,” says Jasmine Enberg, VP and principal analyst covering social media at Emarketer.
Whether X will remain a relevant place for brands to be is likely to depend on Musk’s next move. “He has to balance his free speech ideals with the new views on safety and content moderation, but also focus on monetisation given how much revenue has fallen,” says Navarra. A $5.9 billion loss in ad revenue since Musk’s 2022 takeover, according to Warc Media data, makes the platform reportedly worth $9.4 billion, 80 per cent less than the $44 billion Musk paid for it. Though Musk’s affiliation with Trump could actually sway companies to return — Comcast, Disney and IBM have resumed advertising on the platform following the election.
That X will continue to be politically polarising seems hard to deny. “Social media usage is becoming more divided along political lines,” says Enberg, which, in turn, means many of the people who once made X the app it was may decide to disengage completely. “What we’ll see is what we’ve started to see over the past few years with X continue: the people who were the power users, who were the reasons people went to X, will migrate elsewhere, and it will be backfilled by people who skew towards one end of the political spectrum and continue to be an extreme place to spend any amount of time,” says Navarra.
So, where are former X users going?
Weischer now gets her news from in-person conversations with industry friends and through WhatsApp chats rather than any online platform. For research, she mostly uses Tumblr, Vogue Runway and print media. “Putting my money where my mouth is and buying magazines, old or new,” says Weischer. Charrière says she hasn’t yet found somewhere that’s replaced Twitter, but has been using Substack more to discover new voices this year. “But it’s the same. What’s going to be its future? It all feels very out of our control.”
Two have emerged as X alternative frontrunners: the Meta-owned Threads and Bluesky, an app created by Twitter’s founder. The user bases of both apps surged following the US presidential election with Meta reporting on 25 November an influx of 35 million new Threads users that month alone. In its Q3 2024 earnings, it said Threads had 275 million monthly active users, which is over 75 per cent of X’s 358 million monthly user base, per Emarketer’s estimates. Bluesky reported hitting 20 million users after the election and has been gaining around 1 million users per day. “Threads and Bluesky have emerged as safe havens for disillusioned or marginalised X users,” says Enberg.
Threads: A big audience, but seeking identity
Threads has the infrastructure and the user base to challenge X. Emarketer predicts over one-third (35.8 per cent) of US Instagram users will be active on Threads next year. This makes it a prime place for brands that have flourished on Instagram, says Enberg, allowing brands the opportunity to connect with those users more conversationally as they do on X.
With its easy sign-up process via Instagram, the platform is already home to many of the top fashion houses and brands, as well as industry leaders and cultural critics, including @ThatAdult, @iDeserveCouture, @Omndi, @TheKimbino and @DataButMakeItFashion. Gucci has 7.2 million followers on X, a platform it joined in 2008, and already 6.8 million followers on Threads in less than a year.
Recent tests and launches from the last three months include a new design that makes toggling between feeds easier, an enhanced search experience, an improved Trending Now feature in the US along with AI-powered summaries of what people are discussing, updating the ranking systems to prioritise content from people you follow and the ability to create custom feeds, or lists, of people and topics. Threads doesn’t yet host ads — something that will reportedly be introduced early next year through a slow rollout so as not to alienate users who enjoy its ad-free experience. This means brands must currently participate in the space organically or through collaborations with creators and influencers.
While Meta is working to distance the platform from Instagram, it’s still heavily linked and doesn’t yet have a clear sense of identity or purpose of its own, experts say. This is both an opportunity and a challenge for brands. “The lack of a clear, standalone identity for Threads is still a hurdle it must overcome for it to have real staying power,” says Enberg. “Many brands are still testing and learning on the platform, and most have yet to form a full-fledged strategy.”
Bluesky: A budding audience, but few visuals
Bluesky currently most closely resembles old-school Twitter. A spinoff of the company from before Musk took over, the app was created in 2019 by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who sat on Twitter’s board of directors until May 2024. The platform, which is now run and predominantly owned by chief executive Jay Graber, is decentralised, which means users can create their own servers on which they can store data instead of using servers owned by the company.
Many of the functions on Bluesky are similar to those on X, including the ability to make text-based posts with a 300-character limit known as “skeets”. These can include images and videos, and users can re-post, like other posts, and reply to other users. Users can follow others, send direct messages, and create custom feeds that others can subscribe to. These feeds may have different themes or algorithms than Bluesky’s own Discover feed, which is meant to give users a way to personalise their experience and find interesting content across the network. Graber said in February that she won’t “enshittify the network with ads”, but last week noted that advertising isn’t ruled out completely and that ads could eventually appear in search results rather than in users’ feeds. Currently, it’s experimenting with paid services, such as having people pay for custom domains in their usernames.
While Bluesky’s user base is still a fraction of that of X or Threads, its focus on a healthier social ecosystem — in August, it added new ‘anti-toxicity’ features to help users protect themselves against harassment and dogpiling — has prompted a recent influx of media personalities, celebrities, including Lizzo, Jamie Lee Curtis and Gabrielle Union, and other high-profile users. For now, not many brands are participating. “Fashion was very slow for Twitter, too,” Charrière says. “It’s not visual, and they just didn’t understand how to navigate it for a long time.”
“For Bluesky to attract fashion, it also needs to offer platforms for visual storytelling and align with the industry’s love for exclusivity and innovation,” Navarra adds. “It needs more features for that visual, social element, which you get much more heavily on TikTok or Instagram.”
The key to success
To succeed on Threads, Bluesky, or any X competitor, brands need to understand the platform’s culture, its tone, and the audience’s expectations, says Navarra. “Authenticity, speed, and adaptability are critical. On any social platform, the key to success is to be relevant without being reactionary and consistent without being repetitive.”
As for what Threads and Bluesky need to do to usurp X? “I think the true replacement for X won’t just mimic its features but will innovate where X faltered, particularly in terms of trust, transparency, and user engagement,” says Navarra. “In order for either to succeed culturally, they must create a sense of belonging and urgency, two things X once mastered. It’s going to be an interesting battle between those two and maybe another that comes out of the blue as well.”
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