Bluesky Explained: Luke Skywalker and 21 Million Others Are Here, Should You Join?
Social network Bluesky has been growing rapidly since the end of the US presidential election. The site has added more than 1 million new users per day over the past few days and has added more than 5.5 million users since the Nov. 5 election, bringing its user count to more than 21 million, a company representative said in an email Monday. by Thursday.
Bluesky users have created at least two changing counters to track the site’s numbers. 1 counter Theo Sanderson, Professor from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; another counter It was created by a user known simply as Natalie on the site.
The sky is blue now Ranked #1 in the free apps section It beat popular social network Threads and artificial intelligence assistant ChatGPT to become the No. 1 iPhone app store in the United States. That’s a pretty big jump from October’s ranking of 181st, According to TechCrunchciting data from Applied Intelligence Application characters.
The site is adding 1 million users every day, which equates to approximately 12 new users every second. The number of users in September was 9 million, compared with 21 million.
Celebrities also make Bluesky’s presence known. star wars star Mark Hamill recently joined the sitedeclared himself a “Twitter quitter.”
Bluesky may be thriving, but the site still has a long way to go before it can catch up to the competition. Forbes reports As of September, X had 588 million global users, down from 611 million in April. Threads, Meta’s X competitorwith more than 275 million daily active users.
X factor
While it’s impossible to determine how many new users left because of X owner Elon Musk’s public support of President-elect Donald Trump, many Bluesky users mentioned the election in their first posts. Cable reports Many Taylor Swift fans (a group that once had a large presence on X) are turning to Bluesky.
Bluesky is a social media platform that has many similarities with X (formerly known as Twitter). After billionaire Musk, X goes through some changes purchased the site and retirement estate Show blue check mark for verified accounts, Restore a previously banned account and started New subscription plan.
October 16, X announced It is changing its blocking feature to allow people to prevent others from seeing their messages on the site. If posts are set to public, blocked accounts can now see that person’s posts on X, but they won’t be able to reply to, like, or retweet them. “This is not a blockage,” An X user replied. “This is support tracking.”
The next day, October 17, Lantian shared a post It was announced that it had welcomed 500,000 visitors in just one day. “First day here” A blue sky user wrote in response to the company’s post about its growth. “I just got into it. I was a long-time Twitter user, but it’s a shell now.”
X has also updated its terms of service so that any lawsuits brought by users against the service must be handled by a federal court in North Texas, “where judges often deliver victories for conservative litigants in political cases.” . “Globe and Mail” report.
These latest changes may have sparked an uptick in interest in Bluesky, which the company is seeing User account surge Earlier this year, X was blocked by a Brazilian court (the block was later X Cancellation after payment of fine). according to new york timesusers say Bluesky is the app that comes closest to imitating X.
Here’s what you need to know about Bluesky.
How do I register?
To join, just go to the home page create an account. You can download the Bluesky app iOS system or Androidor use Bluesky on your desktop.
It will ask for your email address and phone number (to send a verification code) and tell you to choose a username and password. Then you come in.
How is Bluesky similar to X and Threads?
If you’re used to X, then Bluesky’s design and purpose should make sense to you.
The site uses vertically scrolling messages that feature small, circular photo avatars of the user, with icons under the message showing how many comments, likes and retweets they have received. It looks very similar to the format of X meta themewhich is currently the second-ranked free app on the App Store, second only to Bluesky.
Who is behind it?
Here’s another Twitter/X connection: Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was a board member, Bluesky project Starting in 2019 When he was CEO of Twitter. Jay Graeber He is the CEO of Blue Sky.
Even Bluesky’s name is related to X’s previous name. Dorsey confirmed speculation from Bluesky users that the name has something to do with Twitter’s bird mascot, the idea being that the bird can fly more freely in the open blue sky. Dorsey left the board in Mayapparently because the service added auditing tools.
Although the “S” in “sky” in the site’s name is not capitalized, it is pronounced “blue sky.” Don’t rhyme with “brewski.”
The application is built on what is called Authentication Transfer Protocolor AT, a social media framework created by the company that consists of a network of many different sites.
How is Bluesky different?
domain as handle
For one thing, you can set your domain name to your handle if you want. This could help with verification, which became a hot issue on Twitter once Musk started removing blue checkmarks from verified accounts that refused to pay the monthly fee.
“For example, a newsroom like NPR could set its handle to @npr.org,” Bluesky Social Company Blog Notes. “Any reporter NPR wants to verify can then set their handle to @name.npr.org using a subdomain. Brand accounts can also have their handle set to their domain.”
Moderate
Moderation is also different. Another blog post It said Bluesky was already using automated moderation and was developing a community tagging system, which it described as “something similar to a shared mute/block list.”
Users of many social media platforms will see posts in feeds chosen for them by algorithms, although you can influence this by following or blocking certain accounts. But Bluesky wants to give you a chance to choose various algorithms to determine what you are seeing.
You can mute an account, which prevents you from seeing any notifications or top-level posts from them, or you can block an account, which goes a step further and means that neither you nor the other account can see or interact with each other’s posts . You can also report abusive posts or accounts. The blocking options may be of particular interest to users who are dissatisfied with X’s recent changes to blocking behavior.
There are several features – Ability to hide replies to your posts and separate your posts from other users’ posts that reference your posts – Designed to stop buildup and other toxic materials Behavior.
keep in touch
Creators who gain a following on Bluesky may one day be able to keep in touch with those who care about them, even as the service itself changes.
If you want to follow someone you follow on X, a third party sky follower bridge is a free tool that scans your follower list and follows accounts with the same name on Bluesky. You’ll get some false positives and a lot of dormant Bluesky accounts, but overall we found it works well.
Custom feed
Algorithms are the rules that determine how to filter content and recommend it to users. Bluesky has something called a custom feed, which allows you to choose the algorithm that determines what you see.
“Imagine you want your timeline to contain only posts from each other, or only posts with cat photos, or only posts related to sports – you can simply select the feed of your choice from the open marketplace,” Blog posts on the website explain. A longer article details Custom feed and algorithm selection. Add and discover new feeds by clicking the hashtag icon at the bottom of the app.
Developers can use the site’s Feed Generator Starter Kit Create custom feeds, and the site promises that eventually, the tools will be simple enough for the rest of us to build custom feeds.
Comment
Onion CEO Ben Collins tweets In April 2023, when he was a technology reporter for NBC, Bluesky “worked, looked and felt like (Twitter)” and praised the site’s “moderation, desktop experience and reliability.”
As of November 19, the site has a rating of 4.2 stars out of 5 on the Apple App Store. “Feels like the early days of Twitter, but more organic,” one commenter wrote.
Who is using it?
Here is a short list of some of the people and groups you’ll see on Bluesky.
