Jay Alabaster 
A post on Threads promoting a New Year's soba-eating event in Tokyo's Shibuya district, December 2024.
When Elon Musk poured $44 billion into acquiring Twitter (now rebranded as X) three years ago, he was quick to praise Japan as its ideal market.
He called the California-based platform "Japan-centric" and a market to which all countries should aspire, per reports. Musk even announced a rare foreign development team based in Tokyo. And he has repeatedly praised the country online and in public appearances.
But now as in other countries, rivals like Threads and Bluesky are chipping away at its local user base. Within Japan, this trend has not been overtly political. It has come as a result of the chaotic changes at Musk's X and deeper cultural shifts.
"There has been a flood of problems at X" since it was sold, Yo Mikami, a professor and IT journalist, said on a TV appearance in 2024. "Elon Musk's authoritarian style has led its services to change back and forth at his whim."
A Microblogging Triumvirate
Japan has long had a particular love for "microblogging," the short text-based posting popularized by Twitter. The format allows for wordplay with emoji and Japanese characters, conveying more meaning with fewer characters than in English. It also offers anonymity and the ability to easily have multiple accounts for different social groups.
Now what is emerging in the country is a microblogging triumvirate, with a host of smaller domestic services in the wings. Each platform has a distinct flavor and type of content. And many users hop back and forth between them depending on their use case.
X, Threads, and Bluesky are all pouring resources into the country.
X Chaos Spurs Users to Stray
To be sure, X is still dominant in Japan. The network serves as the official mouthpiece of many government organizations. In the wake of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011, it was adopted for spreading disaster information. It is the text-based platform of choice for companies, public personalities, and particularly adherents of Japan's massive "otaku" culture.
But Threads is making major inroads in Japan as a lighter, more stable alternative. It was created as an alternative to the Musk-led X parent by company Meta, which also operated social behemoths Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. Bluesky is attracting attention as an upstart, decentralized service without the hostility and chaos of X.
Data Hints at Changing of the Guard
User data is hard to pin down as the platforms release numbers at different times and in flattering formats. But the numbers show X slowly giving up ground in Japan, especially to new users.
X has at least 67 million monthly active users in Japan, by far its biggest market outside of the US, according to numbers released in January by Comnico. This means that over half of Japan's overall population of about 124 million is on the platform. X has 600 million monthly users worldwide, Elon Musk posted in 2024.
This compares to over 10 million Japan users for Threads, via Comnico. Parent company Meta has emphasized the overall growth of the network in recent months, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg stating in the company's January earnings call that it now has 320 million monthly active users globally.
Bluesky announced in January that it had reached 30 million users worldwide, and its growth is accelerating. The company said it added over a third of these since November 2024.
Threads, Meta Dominate App Downloads
This trend is also reflected in the official app store popularity rankings for Google's Android and Apple's iPhone in Japan, where Meta properties dominate. At the time of writing, in the "Social Network" section on the Google Play Store, Meta's Instagram was first, Threads was second, and Facebook fourth. Bluesky was number 39, and X did not appear in the top 200.
On the Apple store in the same category, Threads was first, WhatsApp was sixth, and Facebook was eighth. Neither Bluesky nor X appeared in the top ten.
Piggybacking on Instagram
In the English-speaking world, media reports have focused on a growing number of users who have left Musk's X, particularly to Bluesky, based largely on politics and ideology. On rival networks, the shift has been tagged as an "eXodus" or "Xodus."
In Japan, the shift is less political than cultural. X's fastest-growing rival in Japan is Threads, which is building on the success of its older sibling Instagram. Instagram and X have roughly the same number of active users in Japan, but Instagram users trend younger.
Threads uses Instagram login information and tightly integrates between the two platforms, which has allowed it to quickly gain traction in Japan. But like Instagram, Threads content is widely viewed domestically as more flippant and entertainment-based than X content.
Some Say Threads is Too Superficial
Perceptions that the new platform Threads is superficial have been a turn-off for some.
Hiroyuki Nishimura, or "hiroyuki," an influential Japanese entrepreneur and TV personality who founded the famous message board 2chan, was dismissive of the platform in a 2024 TV appearance.
"I don't use Threads at all," he said. "It's similar to Instagram in that it's just uninteresting people posting pictures to show off. As far as I hear, there isn't much interesting information there."
The leadership of Threads originally wanted to keep its content light-hearted and non-political. Adam Mosseri, who heads both Threads and Instagram, posted in 2023 that, "There are more than enough amazing communities – sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment, etc – to make a vibrant platform without needing to get into politics or hard news."
Threads' presence in Japan has so far followed this path.
Threads' New Years' Noodles Giveaway
In December, Threads ran a Japan-specific campaign in Tokyo's youthful Shibuya district. It included a pop-up restaurant that gave away noodles to users who posted online. Sucking down noodles is a New Year's tradition in Japan, and the local pronunciation of "Threads" sounds like the Japanese word for "slurp."
In November 2024, Japan became the first test market outside of the United States for its "Trending Now" feature. The feature adds a list of popular topics to the search screen. At the time of writing, the majority of the topics were related to the snowy weather.
A Shift to Allow More Politics
But earlier in February, Mosseri reversed this policy. He said political content would now appear in recommendations on Threads. The platform also includes a setting that allows users to adjust the amount of political content they see, although not eliminate it completely.
These changes come on the back of parent company Meta's announcement that it would remove third-party fact-checking and allow more politically sensitive posts to proliferate across its platforms. The company has said it will employ a user-moderated system similar to the one on the X.
Meta's policy shift is widely considered to be a response to the political climate in the US. One of the many executive orders issued by President Donald Trump on January 20, the day he took office, was one titled "Restoring Freedom Of Speech And Ending Federal Censorship." The order aimed to reverse the "trampled free speech rights" on social media.
It is unclear how this will translate to Japan. Threads users in the country are described by Comnico as mainly following Mosseri's original intent, focused mainly on "Chic, fashion, beauty, travel, manga, and magazines."
Bluesky Focused on Japan Even Before Public Launch
Japan has been a focus of Bluesky from early in its development.
Bluesky was founded as a research project at Twitter. It became an independent company in 2021 and cut all ties after Musk took over the company in 2022.
The company has held multiple meetups attended live by senior developers, with CEO Jay Graber making online appearances as well. The first of these was held on April 7, 2023, over a year before the network was opened to the general public.
"The three largest countries on Bluesky are the United States, Japan, and Brazil, and these countries were early adopters since our invite-only days as well," Graber posted in November.
A Peaceful Alternative to X and Threads
Bluesky's reputation in Japan is that of a more benign alternative to X and Threads. As one user wrote: "I have tried quitting Threads. I left because, just like X, the atmosphere is harsh, and there are too many nasty indirect replies — it's exhausting."
Meanwhile, X has continued to expand in Japan. The platform recently launched a job search feature in Japanese, which features local job adverts from firms like Tesla, openAI, and IBM.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino previously pledged in an interview with Nikkei to build a new development center in Japan, the first of its kind outside of the US. The company's official job listings include a number of Tokyo-based software development positions.
X's Asia-Pacific headquarters are in Singapore.
Domestic Politics Come to Japan's Social Networks Arc
Japan's vigorous microbloggers have mostly watched the American political maelstrom unfold on social media with a bemused attachment. But there are signs platforms like X are turning political in Japan as well.
One example is the current governor of Hyogo Prefecture, Motohiko Saito. The politician was forced out of office in late September by a non-confidence vote in the local parliament after a "power harassment," or workplace bullying scandal.
Saito, however, made a rare political comeback based on a campaign waged almost entirely on social media, and was reelected in November. Accusations of inaccurate online information, both for and against, continue to swirl around his campaign.
