Bluesky adds 700,000 new users in a week / A ‘majority' of the new users are from the US, indicating that people are searching for a new platform as an alternative to X.
Bluesky does have federation, it's not at the level of Mastodon's, but it's improving. You can host a personal data server, which lets you host your account from your own server. You do still access this account through the main BlueSky website and apps, but authentication is done through your own server.
Speaking of features, I'm somewhat surprised more people aren't interested in Misskey and co., especially compared to Mastodon's overwhelming share of the Fediverse pie.
Also, a Bluesky and Mastodon user, although I use Mastodon significantly more. Both have upsides and downsides. Mastodon's onboarding experience has improved, but it's still worse than Bluesky's. Also, the fact that Mastodon doesn't federate likes is honestly very strange. It makes the platform look dead at first glance, which really hurts first impressions.
I still prefer Mastodon, federation is great and I've had an easier time finding people to follow there. Bluesky's feature of following community made feeds is really cool though.
You only see the likes from your instance, they don't federate to others. This is a purposeful decision made my the Mastodon team, but I don't agree with their reasoning behind it.