Why I like Bluesky, So Far
Bluesky, a decentralized Twitter clone
It’s been a crazy two weeks on Bluesky, the decentralized Twitter clone that’s quickly growing even while it’s still in beta.
But it’s not really a clone of Twitter at all, and I will explain why. Bluesky is building a decentralized protocol which means that Bluesky is only one expression of a big ecosystem that anyone can build in. Let’s break it down further, for non techy people the word ‘protocol’ isn’t well understood. Let’s put it like this:
The Bluesky team is building a decentralized protocol called AT Protocol: https://atproto.com/
But the AT Protocol isn’t the Bluesky app. The AT Protocol is the engine that Bluesky uses, and anyone can build their own unique version of Bluesky and run it themselves with their own rules. Compare this with Twitter: if you piss off Musky, he pulls the plug on your account and you’re dead. You can’t move anywhere else. It’s the end.
If for some reason you don’t like Bluesky, you can move to a different server that the Bluesky team doesn’t control. This is just not possible on a centralized site like Twitter.
What this means for you and I is that even if we don’t like what the Bluesky team is building, we can change servers and go to a different network, all without losing our social media data, handles and followers. The idea of making a decentralized protocol isn’t new, and many other solutions exist, but for me, after trying them all out, I like Bluesky the best and here’s why:
Superior UX
After using nostr and mastodon, they just aren’t cutting it for me. On nostr, for example images are blurry until you click on them. As an artist, this just isn’t ideal for me. Mastodon just didn’t feel right because of all the clunky addresses and difficulty to get started. They didn’t prioritize usability or UX.
Team
The Bluesky team is right there on the app, engaging, responding and communicating transparently with us! This is actually the most important thing to me, because it shows that they are actively listening to and responding to their early adopters. I’m also very happy to learn that the CEO, Jay Graber used to be a developer for ZCash. And the fact that she’s a woman is another plus for me personally. It shouldn’t matter, but it does. From what I’ve observed, she’s extremely smart, measured and has common sense. Something I think Musk lacks entirely, as he seems to be driven completely by his fragile ego.
Vibe
There is definitely a very energetic vibe happening on bsky. People can feel it. It’s very hard to describe how it took root, but I think it has something to do with feeling relieved about not being under Musk’s control. It’s the same vibe when your abusive father leaves the house. Everyone just takes a long collective sigh of relief. I can be myself on Bluesky without the threat of my account being shut off.
Devs are building
I see a lot of developer activity thriving on Bluesky. The GitHub repos are there too if we want to comment directly on a feature.
I used to have an art sales bot on twitter, ran by Andrei, and he informed that Musk recently marked up the monthly API cost to $42,000 per month! Andrei used to run art bots on Twitter, but Musk just destroyed that. I could go own about all the stuff Musk is destroying, but I think you already know. For me, my last straw was when Musk throttled our Substack links. I was using Revue before Musk killed that, then I switched to Substack, which Musk then tried to kill off. He clearly is an idiot. For me that was it. I’m moving to Bluesky, and today was the first day I deleted my Twitter app from my phone. I’ll be doing Spaces on Twitter, but not much else from here on. I have real engagement and fun on Bluesky so there is no point in continuing on a slowly dying centralized social app like Twitter.
There are so many aspects I like about Bluesky, I don’t know where to start. Some of this happiness I experienced is because of the small number of people on the app when I started. I began using Bluesky two weeks ago when there were about 8500 on the app. Now there is over 31,000 and we learned that after Musk took over Twitter, the number of the people on the waitlist has surged to 1.5 million.
It’s good to be on Bluesky……..there are lots of new words to learn too: skyline, TPOT, etc.
A lot of people ask how I got invite codes.
It’s quite simple actually. I have been very active in doing the following things on bsky: making memes about bsky, welcoming new people to bsky, providing feedback to the team regularly, inviting essential people to the platform, like Eliza Bleu who is one of the most instrumental people advocating for human trafficking survivors. My best advice on how to get invite codes is to become active and useful to others.
Useful Bluesky links:
The AT Protocol: https://atproto.com/
Find me on Bluesky: @stellabelle.bsky.social
Do you know how the usernames work? Does everyone get the same @<username>.bsky.social handle? Or is it more like Mastodon where different servers will issue you different handles (like email addresses)?
Thanks!