BlueSky Isn't Dying - and There's a Larger Ecosystem Growing Around Its Open Protocol (techcrunch.com) 58
BlueSky has grown from roughly 10 million users in early November to 36.79 million today — and its last 30 days of traffic looks very level.
But instead of calling BlueSky's traffic "level", right-leaning libertarian Megan McArdle argues instead that BlueSky's "decline shows no sign of leveling out" (comparing the stable figures from the last month to a one-time spike seven months ago so they can write "It's now down about 50 percent"). And Wednesday the conservative UK magazine Spectator also ignored the 30-day-leveling to write instead that BlueSky is somehow "sliding down a slope".
But TechCrunch thinks the "up or down" conversation is entirely missing the point of "the wider network of apps built on the open protocol that Bluesky's team spearheaded" — and how BlueSky "is only meant to be one example of what's possible within the wider AT Proto ecosystem." If you don't like the tone of the topics trending on Bluesky, you can switch to other apps, change your default feeds, or even build your own social platform using the technology. Already, people are using the protocol that powers Bluesky to build social experiences for specific groups — like Blacksky is doing for the Black online community or like Gander Social is doing for social media users in Canada. There are also feed builders like Graze and those in Surf that let you create custom feeds where you can focus on specific content you care about — like video games or baseball — and exclude others, like politics. Built into Bluesky (and other third-party clients) are tools that let you pick your default feed and add others that interest you from a range of topics. If you want to follow a feed devoted to your favorite TV show or animal, for instance, you can. In other words, Bluesky is meant to be what you make it, and its content can be consumed in whatever format you prefer best.
In addition to Bluesky itself, the wider network of apps built on the AT Protocol includes photo- and video-sharing apps, livestreaming tools, communication apps, blogging apps, music apps, movie and TV recommendation apps, and more. Other tools also let you combine feeds from Bluesky with other social networks. Openvibe, for instance, can mix together feeds from social networks like Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Nostr. Apps like Surf and Tapestry offer ways to track posts on open social platforms as well as those published with other open protocols like RSS. This lets the apps pull in content from blogs, news sites, YouTube, and podcasts.
Even just considering BlueSky itself, three weeks ago Fast Company pointed out that BlueSky "grew from 11 million users to 25 million between late October and mid-December, but has added only about 10 million more since then." So how is a 10-million user increase "dying"? For a social network, being prematurely written off is a rite of passage. It's even a compliment of sorts — a sign that people are paying attention and care... When I chatted with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber this week, I wasn't surprised that she didn't seem fazed by the debate on her platform and saw the parallels with early-days Twitter. "Reports of our death are greatly exaggerated," she told me. "It's a similar thing, because with social sites, it's not straight up all the time. [Growth] comes in waves, and at each stage, there's a new era of communities being established and formed. We're still seeing a lot of community formation, and one of the most exciting things is how structurally different this is. It's not just another social site that has to be a singular winner-take-all in an ecosystem with existing incumbents...."
One other challenge that Bluesky has not yet fully confronted is monetizing itself. Onstage at Web Summit, Graber emphasized that it's working on subscription services, a healthier revenue source than stuffing feeds with ads, though potentially a tougher one to scale up to sustainability. The company announced a $15 million Series A funding round last October.
But again, the point isn't BlueSky's increasing user count or its stablizing levels of Daily Unique "Likers" — but its underlying open source protocol: [S]he was at her most passionate when discussing the company's aspiration to decentralize social networking via its open AT Protocol. It powers Bluesky — and variants such as the Pinksky photo-sharing app, which she praised onstage — but could also provide the infrastructure for further-flung social experiences. Maybe even ones catering to folks who have zero interest in participating in the Bluesky community. "The goal is to really get through that this is a Choose Your Own Adventure and Bluesky's just the beginning," she says. "The sky's the limit." Whether she'll fulfill her grandest ambitions, I'm not sure. But I already like this era of social networking better than the one when a handful of winners really did take all.
But instead of calling BlueSky's traffic "level", right-leaning libertarian Megan McArdle argues instead that BlueSky's "decline shows no sign of leveling out" (comparing the stable figures from the last month to a one-time spike seven months ago so they can write "It's now down about 50 percent"). And Wednesday the conservative UK magazine Spectator also ignored the 30-day-leveling to write instead that BlueSky is somehow "sliding down a slope".
But TechCrunch thinks the "up or down" conversation is entirely missing the point of "the wider network of apps built on the open protocol that Bluesky's team spearheaded" — and how BlueSky "is only meant to be one example of what's possible within the wider AT Proto ecosystem." If you don't like the tone of the topics trending on Bluesky, you can switch to other apps, change your default feeds, or even build your own social platform using the technology. Already, people are using the protocol that powers Bluesky to build social experiences for specific groups — like Blacksky is doing for the Black online community or like Gander Social is doing for social media users in Canada. There are also feed builders like Graze and those in Surf that let you create custom feeds where you can focus on specific content you care about — like video games or baseball — and exclude others, like politics. Built into Bluesky (and other third-party clients) are tools that let you pick your default feed and add others that interest you from a range of topics. If you want to follow a feed devoted to your favorite TV show or animal, for instance, you can. In other words, Bluesky is meant to be what you make it, and its content can be consumed in whatever format you prefer best.
In addition to Bluesky itself, the wider network of apps built on the AT Protocol includes photo- and video-sharing apps, livestreaming tools, communication apps, blogging apps, music apps, movie and TV recommendation apps, and more. Other tools also let you combine feeds from Bluesky with other social networks. Openvibe, for instance, can mix together feeds from social networks like Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Nostr. Apps like Surf and Tapestry offer ways to track posts on open social platforms as well as those published with other open protocols like RSS. This lets the apps pull in content from blogs, news sites, YouTube, and podcasts.
Even just considering BlueSky itself, three weeks ago Fast Company pointed out that BlueSky "grew from 11 million users to 25 million between late October and mid-December, but has added only about 10 million more since then." So how is a 10-million user increase "dying"? For a social network, being prematurely written off is a rite of passage. It's even a compliment of sorts — a sign that people are paying attention and care... When I chatted with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber this week, I wasn't surprised that she didn't seem fazed by the debate on her platform and saw the parallels with early-days Twitter. "Reports of our death are greatly exaggerated," she told me. "It's a similar thing, because with social sites, it's not straight up all the time. [Growth] comes in waves, and at each stage, there's a new era of communities being established and formed. We're still seeing a lot of community formation, and one of the most exciting things is how structurally different this is. It's not just another social site that has to be a singular winner-take-all in an ecosystem with existing incumbents...."
One other challenge that Bluesky has not yet fully confronted is monetizing itself. Onstage at Web Summit, Graber emphasized that it's working on subscription services, a healthier revenue source than stuffing feeds with ads, though potentially a tougher one to scale up to sustainability. The company announced a $15 million Series A funding round last October.
But again, the point isn't BlueSky's increasing user count or its stablizing levels of Daily Unique "Likers" — but its underlying open source protocol: [S]he was at her most passionate when discussing the company's aspiration to decentralize social networking via its open AT Protocol. It powers Bluesky — and variants such as the Pinksky photo-sharing app, which she praised onstage — but could also provide the infrastructure for further-flung social experiences. Maybe even ones catering to folks who have zero interest in participating in the Bluesky community. "The goal is to really get through that this is a Choose Your Own Adventure and Bluesky's just the beginning," she says. "The sky's the limit." Whether she'll fulfill her grandest ambitions, I'm not sure. But I already like this era of social networking better than the one when a handful of winners really did take all.
I know people who use Twitter (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand if you just stay in your curated feed it's not impossible to keep most of the Nazi shit out of your feed. It'll still cre
Re: I know people who use Twitter (Score:4, Funny)
Heck. /. used to have a good libertarian minority and today it's nerds defending their trans kids here.
Wow, people defending their kids. How despicable.
Re: (Score:1)
If their kids are trans the ship has already sailed on defending them.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: I know people who use Twitter (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Getting outraged about that empirical observation, however, overlooks Kelly’s other observation. Because while Bluesky is far from perfect, it is much less toxic than many other social media sites. That ain’t nothing — especially compared to Musk’s demented version of Twitter.
Why not have a place on the internet that you can go and have a nice, civilised chat with someone who shares your worldview without the risk of coming across a load of vile racist content? It comes down, in the end, to whether or not you believe that the “digital town square” Musk talked about when he bought Twitter can really exist and, if it can, whether it is of any benefit to anyone.
He said: "For many, X has become a nasty place where lies and conspiracy have bloomed unchecked and where the nuance of reasonable discussion has been lost because a propensity of many of its users to see life as a series of simple binaries. "What started in Twitter days as a real public space for interaction has been manipulated into an angry maelstrom of heat with far too little light - and that maelstrom is being fanned by an owner with a very particular agenda."
Your sources tend to say the same thing about twitter.
Re: (Score:2)
That works out to one hell of a slogan: "Choose Bluesky, for Xitter levels of toxicity combined with Old Twitter levels of censorship."
Re: (Score:2)
Goebbels's wet dream.
"For many, X has become a nasty place where lies and conspiracy have bloomed unchecked and where the nuance of reasonable discussion has been lost because a propensity of many of its users to see life as a series of simple binaries. "What started in Twitter days as a real public space for interaction has been manipulated into an angry maelstrom of heat with far too little light - and that maelstrom is being fanned by an owner with a very particular agenda."
Twitter sounds like a fun place, where do i sign up?
Re: (Score:2)
Bluesky's only selling point is that it's supposed to be a better place than Xitter. You're so busy bashing Xitter that it comes across as conceding that Bluesky isn't any better.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Choose Bluesky, for Xitter levels of toxicity combined
Your source always says that bluesky is less toxic than twitter. Remember, your sources that you put in your post.
Because while Bluesky is far from perfect, it is much less toxic than many other social media sites. That ain’t nothing — especially compared to Musk’s demented version of Twitter.
Sounds like you would fit in perfect at shwitter.
Re: (Score:2)
Choose Bluesky, for Xitter levels of toxicity combined
Your source always says that bluesky is less toxic than twitter. Remember, your sources that you put in your post.
Because while Bluesky is far from perfect, it is much less toxic than many other social media sites. That ain’t nothing — especially compared to Musk’s demented version of Twitter.
Sounds like you would fit in perfect at shwitter.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The alternative seems to be a completely controlled social environment, hermetically sealed from anything considered "problematic". It's a form of social cleanliness OCD that I'd rather avoid.
I'm also very conflicted on this, but intuitively tend to lend credence to the idea that it may be better to deal with the cesspool of AI slop and garbage than relegate these functions to a third party sanitizing app or filter we have no recourse or control over.
Ideally, and as these services mature it'll eventually become a reality, we should have personalized algorithmic agents doing all of this work for us, totally under our control and having direct access to a site's API
(wishful thinking, because al
Re: (Score:2)
I've yet to see any neo-nazi material on X. Seems more likely you'd find that on bluesky given the political alignment.
BlueSky is for radicals (Score:1, Flamebait)
"To that end, I found Justice [Clarence] Thomas's concurrence on medical care for transgender youth quite illuminating," Vance wrote, including a screenshot of the conservative justice's statement agreeing with the 6-3 ruling.
Posting this got JD banned from Bluesky [nypost.com]. After something like that, you can't pretend that it wants any conservative or moderate posters.
Re:BlueSky is for radicals (Score:5, Insightful)
His account is active, https://bsky.app/profile/jd-va... [bsky.app] and he also a verification check.
In your own article Bluesky, however, claimed Vance’s account was suspended over concerns that it was run by an impersonator of the vice president, not because of his post.
Which I mean, come on, if you got a new handle called @jd-vance-1.bsky.social and they didn't do the Bluesky verify process before and are just using the default domain (which before the check system it involved proving you own your domain name) it seems fair to err on the side of caution, especially as the account is getting attention.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
If it didn't make the news how would they know the account was real and not an impersonator if they didn't verify it beforehand?
Re: (Score:2)
Do you actually have any evidence of that?
Re: (Score:2)
And should they do this for every troll/impersonator who creates an account of a public figure? Have you any idea how often people try to create such accounts? I can guarantee it isn't as seldom as every other week or month, it's daily so it's just easier to ban such accounts that are unverified instead of wasting a lot of time and manpower.
If Vance wanted a verified account he could have used the verification process when he created the account but he didn't, with predictable results. Ie the initial ban wa
Re: BlueSky is for radicals (Score:2)
ZERO effort was spent to verify prior to ban
You made that up. Every social media service has tons of impersonator accounts being created, and you act like they can just pick up a red phone to the VPOTUS or whoever to verify each one. Far, far less damage is done by proactively blocking impersonators of VIPs, and in the rare one-time event they are actually intending to create an account either themselves or through a spokesperson they can have their account confirmed.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
lol
We Didn't Need Another Other Protocol (Score:1, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. ActivityPub it is.
Re:We Didn't Need Another Other Protocol (Score:5, Interesting)
I keep hearing people say this, and I did join Mastodon years ago - but it's like a wasteland. Almost no one I'm interested in posts there.
Bluesky, on the other hand, seems to be attracting a variety of people.
Re: (Score:2)
Mastodon isn't like a large public square as the other social networks are. It's more like gatherings of neighbours, hobbyists, family, clubs. An instance is a group of individuals with similar interests. You wouldn't join a chess club if your interest was in skiing, would you?
You could join one of the larger servers and simply broswe around for a while to find things that interest you and see from which instance the tags and posts come from, then have a look there.
I think Mastodon is closer to physical soc
Re: We Didn't Need Another Other Protocol (Score:2)
Mastodon is less a public square, more a series of self organizing echo chambers. I've read the stuff posted to Mastodon instances, I'm sort of happier they keep themselves isolated.
Kind of how Tumblr used to keep the degenerates grouped together and away from all the normal people, then they had to let them all spill out and taint the rest of the web.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The ATProto people address this in their FAQ, mainly about account portability and scaling, seems like standard open-source disagreements.
https://atproto.com/guides/faq... [atproto.com]
Mastodon search isn't. (Score:2)
Join the Fediverse. It's cooler than Bluesky both literally and figuratively.
The problem I've had with Mastodon, assuming it's representative of fediverse microblogging, is that its search relies almost completely on hashtags. Full-text search is opt-in per post, and very few users have bothered to hunt for the switch to opt in and turn it on. Posts made before the introduction can't be found at all except through tags. And the users of Mastodon think that's a good thing because it protects vulnerable members of marginalized groups from abusive bigots searching for them.
This leaves
Re: (Score:2)
lol, -1, I guess you hit a nerve. I thought your post was spot on. I'd of +1 if I had posted already.
Clever Protocol, Unworkable Management (Score:2)
There's an interesting twist where the protocol is interesting and clever, the client can be configured/recompiled to use a different server, but the company developing it is also doing Ministry of Truth style moderation.
So the interest from the independent open source community is low because they don't expect a good working relationship with the company.
And it may not be mature enough to fork yet.
While other solutions are 'good enough' for most.
IIRC Bluesky protocol can federate just fine but the company
Re: Clever Protocol, Unworkable Management (Score:2)
Email is an interesting counterexample of how terrible things can get when things are too open. Operating your own email server is prohibitively difficult not because the core technologies are hard to implement, but because bad actors have forced us to stack all these ad-hoc filters and trust systems on top of email. Setting up an smtp server is easy. Sending an email that will actually show up in an inbox is not.
'e's not dead. (Score:2)
"and its last 30 days of traffic looks very level."
'e's resting.
Blue Sky (Score:2)
Every time I hear that name I think of two things.
Pink Floyd https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
and
Rick and Morty https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
why not to lead any argument with "Megan Mcardle" (Score:2)
"Megan McArdle: Show me the victims of insider trading. I’ll wait."
https://www.sltrib.com/opinion... [sltrib.com]
Maybe? (Score:2)
It's even a compliment of sorts — a sign that people are paying attention and care
Who knows? The desperation is funny though. "People are paying attention! They care!"
Why is this getting posted? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Probably because Bluesky is dying.
Bluesky is extremely strange (Score:2)
Trivially one could call it toxic, even more so than the old Twitter.
In reality itâ(TM)s more than toxic, itâ(TM)s strange. Itâ(TM)s like being in someone elseâ(TM)s dream where everyone is in agreement over something which you yourself are struggling to understand. Like being dropped into a Reddit comment thread where everyone is fishing for karma.
And then thereâ(TM)s the bizarre levels of blocking. You can see this but not that.
GOP is the best (Score:2)
Now, right-wing fanatics are joining in large numbers and dominating the conversation on some posts. It's not quite 'Trump is the new m
LOL! @ Megan McArdle (Score:3)
I was uninterested in this until I noticed mention of Megan McArdle.
Megan McArdle has been a reliable weather vane for being exactly wrong about everything. Like, it's not hit or miss, I literally don't know of an opinion she has expressed that hasn't proven to be mostly wrong or entirely wrong. If you know of anything she has written that was actually correct then please link it because her record for being wrong seems statistically impossible.
If Megan McArdle thinks BlueSky is dying then I would say this is an extremely good omen for BlueSky.
Popularity contests always seemed dumb to me (Score:3)
Bluesky is up -- no, Bluesky is down -- well, it's down since inception, but now it's "leveled off".
But who cares and why, though? Honestly. Do what you like. Engage with whom you like. Forget about whether something is "popular", that's never a good measurement. Death, for example, is "popular". 100% of people engage in it.
It's going strong for me (Score:2)
I use it every day and I en gage far more than I ever did on NaziNet.
Let's use every word trick except show the stats (Score:1)
https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats [jazco.dev]