Bluesky adds 700k new users in a week

I can attest that BlueSky is really nice right now. Feels less combative than Twitter. I started to use it 25 days ago and got 400 or so follows pretty quickly.

I am here: https://bsky.app/profile/benhouston3d.bsky.social

I used this tool to find accounts that match on both platforms:

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sky-follower-bridge...

Bluesky is pretty decent so far. I get about as many responses to my art as I do with twitter, despite having 1/5th the followers on the new platform.

The problem is I don't see much interesting on Bluesky. It's endless people saying "Hello, bluesky! I'm new here!" or "Hello, new bluesky users! Follow me!" Feels like there's less focus on content and more on the individuals themselves. It's further exemplified with weird stuff like "Bulgarian game devs with webbed toes between the ages of 33 and 47 Starter Pack". These starter packs get spammed nonstop and it makes it feel very cliquey, with lots of them being groups that had some degree of twitter "influence" trying to bring it over to Bluesky as-is and without others butting in.

Another thing that's strange to me is that lots of bluesky users post selfies almost nonstop and half of users have selfies as their profile photos. Which, I mean, that's their right. But I feel like with twitter, nobody cared what you looked like or what your background was.

I post on both, but I mainly browse twitter despite having no fondness for the dude running it. I never interact with political slop on twitter so its algorithm only suggests me incredible art. I never interact with selfies but bluesky keeps throwing them at me. Like, no, I really do not care about your cute new lipstick or whatever. I don't care about political hot takes. I just want to see art. And like 50% of it is art. But the other 50% is an endless feed of "look at me! As in literally, look at my face!" that I just cannot get rid of.

Maybe someday the novelty of it being the "new" thing will fade and the selfie obsessed people will go away while content will rise up, like it did with twitter. I hope so.

My hypothesis is still that the problem isn't Twitter per se, but that Twitter-like failure modes are built in to that structure. A communications platform that has certain qualities will tend to become Twitter-like: Many-to-many, short messages, reposting, etc. These are mechanics that will just create certain kinds of behaviors. So, that would predict Bluesky having many of the same problems as Twitter sooner or later.

Whenever I see an article about this or that platform gaining a million users I always think of the Eternal September.

I'd like to see a platform where after a certain number of people join, a new server is automatically created and new users are redirected there, similar to how MMO servers worked.

A few things I like about BlueSky:

1. Your username can be your domain name. I’m @bradgessler.com, which means I can build more “equity” in my domain than I can on other platforms. It’s also really great for brands or open source projects that have their own website.

2. Lots of technical folks have come over from Twitter and the signal to noise ratio is much better. There’s less weird random videos, less people screaming past each other, less porn bots.

3. When I share a link on Bluesky, it doesn’t get penalized.

4. It’s a global namespace so I don’t have to worry about what server people are on that I want to follow. I struggled with this on Mastodon.

5. The UI is as good as Twitter. There’s been a few times now where I forget what network I’m using by just looking at the app.

6. Starter packs are handy to bring folks from your communities over. I created one for Ruby devs at https://go.bsky.app/HXB2cPh and one for companies built on Ruby at https://go.bsky.app/JQyXa2u

I fully expect Bluesky to become completely enshitified over time, but I think it’s going to have a pretty good run for a while. They’re doing a lot of things right and it has fun early Twitter vibes, but without the fail whale.

I think a more important stat is what percentage of new users in Week n has logged in again after Week n + 56 days.

How does it compare to threads?

My complaint about Bluesky is that it is too much like twitter.

Admittedly I ran into less straight forward combativeness and that’s nice.

But still the content was just as inane and hot take heavy.

Granted I accept that “pretty much another twitter” is what the users want.

I've seen this played out many times and won't fall into the "next big social media site" trap anymore. If anything, I've noticed people are moving away from public social media and towards more private sites (only sharing photos and stuff with family members and close friends). The days of "let's put it out there for the entire world to see" are over.

It's beyond words how much Elon Musk has wrecked Twitter. But, I am not ready join another echo chamber that mirrors the same flaws from the other side of the spectrum. My initial impression of BlueSky is just that.

Twitter's greatest flaw—no, I won’t call it "X"—is its obsession with engagement to promote tweets. This creates the worst feed you can think of:

- People ask the dumbest questions, just to bait responses.

- Someone makes a reasonable point, and along comes the dumbest reply. Why? So others can pile on, calling them out, driving up engagement.

- External links are buried. Good articles? Forget it. They’ve vanished from my feed.

- The most toxic people are constantly pushed to my feed. And it's a losing battle to block them all. Keeping my feed politics-free is borderline impossible.

- The fact that you can buy a subscription and ensure that your tweets get highlighted more is absurd. It has made it really easy to get the worst accounts in your feed.

It’s exhausting. I am just there because I think it is still a good marketing channel. But I am not sure anymore if the pros outweigh the cons.

Can I import my old data from Twitter to Bluesky?

With so many disgruntled "democrat" supporters moving from X to BS the question is what will keep BS from ending up like the same echo chamber Twitter was before it was forcibly opened up to the deplorables, garbage, irredeemables and other *-phobes and *-ists. Does the platform have a way to keep the window of allowed discourse open to all or will this simply end up recreating Twitter, warts and all?

Unlike previous attempts for groups of people trying to leave Twitter/X post-Elon acquisition for a competitor social network but failed due to the difficulty of getting all their friends to also switch, this time it might actually stick.

Even before the election results on Tuesday, the vibes on X have been steadily been getting worse from my perspective, and the fact that Musk will get more power and influence from a Trump win may have been its Digg 2.0 moment.

I have replaced my Twitter contact information in my HN profile with my Bluesky contact info, and will be doing the same on my personal website soon.

I deleted my Twitter account a few days ago. I am so disappointed in what became of Musk as he teamed up with Trump and I don't want to support him any more. Of course it does not make a dent in his life, but for mine it does. The time I save I can do more useful things with. I aim to consume less and produce more. or consume more long-form media, like books, or actual newspapers. It will be better for my mood I think, to decouple myself from current events unless they are really significant. So what is the relationship of this to Bluesky? That I am not keen on trying it. I will attempt this change of focus seriously. I will not just change ships, I will stay in my new destination.

Everybody forgets that Twitter created Trump.

They remember fondly when left-crazy ruled Twitter. They forget that the opposite and more-enduring right-reaction formed as part of the same dynamic.

If Twitter had never existed, Donald Trump would still just be playing a rich guy on The Apprentice, and licensing his name to developers of hotels and colognes. Elon Musk would just be pushing electric cars and rockets and solar panels.

Which is why this effort to rebuild Twitter as BlueSky is not good news.

I know it seems that we all need to develop a fever again to dislodge Trump. I don't think we do. Incumbents have gotten wrecked all over the place. The world is not getting better. Four years from now, Team Trump will be the incumbents, and the voters will express their dissatisfaction again. This will happen without efforts to make society start boiling over again. Those will just cause more blowback. We don't need another Twitter.

I tried to service, but it felt buggy, and I just didn't feel there was a need to switch full-time. I'm using social media a lot less, i'm trying to navigate blue sky makes me want to use it even less.