Bluesky rolls out cashtags and LIVE badges amid a boost in app installs

Social web Bluesky is updating its app to allow anyone to share erstwhile they’re live-streaming connected Twitch, and adding specialized hashtags, known arsenic cashtags, for discussing publically traded stocks.

The caller features could perchance assistance Bluesky capitalize connected a caller boost successful caller installs, which person arrived successful the days aft the X deepfake news went mainstream.

On X, users were asking its integrated AI bot Grok to crook photos of existent women and sometimes minors into sexualized images without consent. This week, California’s lawyer general opened an investigation into xAI’s chatbot implicit the proliferation of the “nonconsensual sexually explicit material.”

In the aftermath of the controversy, Bluesky saw its downloads surge successful the U.S. According to caller information from marketplace quality supplier Appfigures, regular downloads of Bluesky’s iOS app person jumped astir 50% from the play earlier quality of the deepfakes reached captious mass.

The steadfast says Bluesky typically sees astir 4,000 installs successful the U.S. per day, but from December 30, 2025, done January 6, 2026, Bluesky’s iOS downloads successful the U.S. totalled astir 19,500. From January 7, 2026, done January 14, downloads grew to 29,000 — a 49% increase.

Meanwhile, cashtags volition let the app to drawback up to 1 of X’s much fashionable usage cases: discussing stocks. To make a cashtag, you spot a dollar awesome earlier the banal ticker awesome (e.g., $AAPL for Apple).

The thought for cashtags was archetypal introduced by stocks-focused societal web Stocktwits, which present has implicit 10 cardinal users, earlier the tags were aboriginal adopted by Twitter successful 2012.

In addition, Bluesky says it’s expanding entree to the “Live Now” experimental diagnostic that lets users adhd a impermanent “LIVE” badge to their avatar to bespeak erstwhile they’re streaming online. Currently, this diagnostic lone supports Twitch and doesn’t let anyone to spell unrecorded straight connected Bluesky itself.

The boost successful enactment connected Bluesky comes aft the web saw declines successful downloads and usage past year. In April 2025, Appfigures noted that the societal networking startup’s downloads dropped to caller lows, and regular mean users connected mobile devices had declined astir 40% by the extremity of October, per Similarweb data. Pew Research reported past year that a fig of influencers present person Bluesky accounts, but they inactive thin to station much regularly connected X.

This suggests that the switching costs are higher than immoderate would expect erstwhile it comes to swapping retired 1 real-time societal web for another. Adding caller features volition lone beryllium portion of the conflict for Bluesky; it volition besides person to find a mode to get users to alteration years of ingrained behavior.