Jay Graber, CEO. Image: Bluesky
As the short-form X alternative continues to add 1m users per day, Ann O’Dea offers a quick starter’s guide for those keen to dip their toe in clearer waters.
While Bluesky is now up to more than 19m users at the time of writing this, even the figures out there belie its real strengths – usability, safety, curation and lack of algorithmic pointers, unless you count the Discover tab – but more of that anon.
As I watch my favourite trusted journalists, academics, innovators – even politicians – flock to the site, and many close their X accounts, I for one think we may have found our new home.
A little background
Along with Silicon Republic, I personally joined Bluesky back in August 2023, when it struck us as the first truly viable alternative to Musk’s X, but I must admit life took over and we didn’t really put a huge amount of effort in.
I was trying Meta’s Threads too, but that quickly proved useless to me. What I was after was a place to follow bright minds, journalists and researchers, innovators and fact-based news.
The Threads algorithm was pushing me towards the light content I consume on Instagram – vegetable growing, vintage and antiques, the arts. That and a sprinkling of the kind of popular culture that was of no interest to me at all – you’ll have guessed I’m not a Swiftie.
In a recent article, I explain why the team here took the decision for Silicon Republic to finally cease posting our content to the former Twitter. Apart from the need to escape the chaos and misinformation site, these days, the traffic coming to us from X/Twitter was heading towards negligible. LinkedIn is a far greater source of traffic, and now we foresee Bluesky as being another viable way to reach our loyal readers.
We are not mainstream media. We cover a niche, so we don’t expect to match our 70,000 following on Twitter any time soon, but already the amount of engagement with a fraction of the followers has been telling.
There’s a handy 60-second explainer from Rose Wang, Bluesky chief operating officer that succinctly explains how it works. “You’re no longer tied to a dominant algorithm that promotes either the most polarising posts and/or the biggest brands,” she explains.
And ignore the ‘echo-chamber’ nonsense. Bluesky is not adding a million users a day because it is some ‘liberal’ sideshow. It is because it offers much of what was best about old Twitter. It offers users a customisable feed of news and views, without all the fire and brimstone – and it has the best safety features and reporting tools of any social media platform I’ve seen to date. There is nothing wrong with wanting to stay up to date in a calm, relatively civil environment.
As for the background and funding, I recommend not paying too much attention to the multiple hot takes out there either – they are very hit and miss.
If you really want to do your research, Kate Conger and Ryan Mac outline background, and the rise of current CEO, the impressive Jay Graber, and her determination for Bluesky to be an independent entity in their book ‘Character Limit’.
Most of you will know Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, was originally behind Bluesky, but is no longer involved in any way.
Getting started on Bluesky
There will be plenty of quick guides popping up out there, but here’s some basic advice on getting started. Firstly, if you were already a Twitter or X user, BlueSky is unapologetically similar in all the good ways, so it will not take long to get yourself acclimatised. However, there are plenty of nifty differences too.
Who to follow
The old trick from Twitter works quite well. Find people you admire and have a peek at who they are following. Bluesky has a clever feature called Starter Packs, which allows anyone to create a grouping of interest groups. It’s a great place to start. If you trust the creator you can simply follow the full pack, or you can wade thought them and find the people you want to follow.
Along with Research Ireland’s strategy director, Ruth Freeman, we compiled a sci-tech starter pack that is likely to appeal to Silicon Republic readers, which aims to pull together all the early Irish or Irish-based arrivals from the worlds of technology, science and innovation. You could do worse than to start there.
On the safety front
Again, you can find user-created moderation or block lists. I recommend using these with care. Bad actors will arrive on Bluesky too, and an old trick is to include good people on block lists. Again, I recommend manual blocking if you wish to stay away from trolls.
As you use Blusky, the best tips will come from those you follow, so watch out for great third-party apps too. For example, the Clearsky App allows you to see who is blocking whom.
It is incredibly easy to report impersonators and trolls on Bluesky, and the small team there is incredibly responsive – we shall see if that continues as the numbers rise. There are all sorts of great safety tools, but my favourite is the ability to detach quote posts, to the great frustration of the trolls.
We’ll be posting many more detailed advice pieces on Blusesky as it grows. My biggest piece of advice is to take your time, do as you did in your early days of Twitter and grow your following and followers organically.
Pick and choose who to follow from Starter Packs rather than pressing follow all. This is a great opportunity for a little bit of digital hygiene. Bluesky is designed specifically to allow you to curate your own social media experience, and not be held victim to the dreaded algorithm of what someone else thinks you should be reading.
Relax, take your time and enjoy the ride.
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