As academic Bluesky grows, researchers find strengths—and shortcomings

According to Science, Bluesky "fosters collegial interactions among scientists, but potentially limits interactions beyond the academic community".

It is becoming "the de facto meeting place for academics—many of whom seem to enjoy this “good boring.”". Why?

• default reverse chrono feed supports smaller accounts, and doesn't optimise for enragement
• custom feeds support subject-focused discussions

How will things evolve? While "Twitter’s size allowed scientists to interact with others such as politicians, journalists... Bluesky is unlikely to ever become as huge as Twitter... There’s not going to be a new Twitter. There are going to be a lot of different things."

And that's good: X's "popularity contest drove academics toward what social media users valued... [but] sells short academic expertise. Bluesky... [is more] a specialized place for academics to talk to other academics.”

A different network structure may emerge on Bluesky: while on X, a few large accounts can segregate the discourse and shape each part of it, Bluesky doesn't (yet?) demonstrate "the typical rich-get-richer effect”.