Bluesky may look like X. It might share a co-founder with X. And as some people flock to the platform amid changes to X, the comparisons to the platform formerly known as Twitter are perhaps inevitable.

But Bluesky doesn’t want to be seen as an alternative to X at all, and instead has bigger ambitions, Rose Wang, COO of Bluesky, told us.

“We’re not positioning ourselves against X,” she said. “We’re positioning ourselves as the new social web.”

Bluesky certainly seems to have benefitted from X’s woes and missteps. When Brazil temporarily banned X after it refused to remove accounts accused of spreading misinformation about the 2022 Brazilian presidential election, Bluesky saw 4 million sign-ups, Wang said. When X changed its policy to allow users blocked by someone to still be able to see their posts, she said it saw another surge.

And as of late November, following the US presidential election in which X owner Elon Musk was heavily involved, Bluesky had surpassed 21 million users worldwide, with as many as 1 million sign-ups per day.

“There’s a lot of hunger to have a place to have global conversation that isn’t a partisan platform, and that there’s basically not many places that serve that need anymore,” Wang said. “We’re fulfilling that need.”

Amid that growth, Bluesky, which became open to the public in February and has just 20 full-time employees, is planning to capitalize on its momentum and aiming to change how social media companies do business.

Continue reading here.—KH

At first glance, basketball and golf don’t seem to have much in common…Except for the fact that hoopers like Stephen Curry and Caitlin Clark occasionally hit the links.

For its latest campaign, performance apparel brand Rhone paired the two sports up—even though Ben Checketts, Rhone’s co-founder and creative director, is the first to admit that the NBA and LPGA are “very different” leagues—in a series of ads starring Miami Heat power forward Kevin Love and LPGA athletes Lilia Vu and Lauren Hartlage.

As Rhone continues its expansion into women’s apparel, and as the importance of mental health becomes an increasingly resonant subject across sports, the campaign is meant to expand Rhone’s reach while demonstrating its long-standing commitment to physical and mental fitness, Checketts said.

“The pressures that are facing Kevin Love are incredibly different than the pressures that are facing Lilia Vu,” Checketts told Marketing Brew. “But there is that common ground of, ‘We’re both athletes, we’re both at the top of our games in many respects, we’ve won a lot, we’ve lost a lot, [and] we’ve suffered a lot.’”

Read more here.—AM

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Joy Howard is chief marketing officer at Back Market, a marketplace specializing in refurbished tech. Previously, Howard has also served as CMO of both Lyft and Sonos, and she’s served in senior marketing roles at brands including Patagonia and Nike.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? Launching Worn Wear at Patagonia is a huge point of pride for me. It was a controversial move at the time—even with the values Patagonia has—and admittedly a risk for the brand. Without the right framing, it could have denigrated the brand and caused a swirl of quality questions. Instead, we pioneered circularity in retail and shaped a consumer experience that has become not just commonplace but preferred. We did this by focusing on the stories that people were already telling—they were and still are proud of their decisions to repair their garments.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I was a touring musician in the ’90s. My shoegaze indie band was signed to Warner Music Group in the post-Nirvana indie label Gold Rush, and we toured extensively supporting bands like Modest Mouse and Cat Power. It was an incredible experience and taught me so much about collaborating on creative projects and the amount of work that goes into art behind the scenes before it reaches an audience. That’s certainly true in marketing, too.

Read more here.

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Ipsos, the French market research firm, is in acquisition talks with Kantar Media, according to Reuters.
• Walmart joined NBCU’s efforts to bring more shoppable ad formats to live sports.
• Absolut and Kahlúa collaborated with Sabrina Carpenter on an espresso martini kit.