Three things you probably didn't know about Bluesky

(this is adapted from an internal presentation)

If, like many, you think Bluesky is "Twitter, but with less Nazis", this post is for you.

It's an understandable mistake - Bluesky, after all, was originally going to underpin Twitter before Elon Musk bought it. Moreover, when the Bluesky team then spun off from Twitter, they decided to keep many things unchanged.

That made the transition easier for people fleeing the hellscape that Twitter then became, but it obscured the true nature of what Bluesky represents. So here are a few facts, along with a few ideas for how organisations of all types could make use of them.

1) Better features, diverse apps

Like Twitter, Bluesky has Lists. However, there several other features making it more useful to more people.

Custom feeds: While Twitter gives you "Who you Follow" and "What Elon thinks you should see", Bluesky has a potentially infinite number of custom feeds.

Each is a subset of the Bluesky firehose, tuned to a particular community's interests and moderation preferences. They're infinite in number because anyone can create one, and anyone can use any feed by simply “pinning” it.

What's more, custom feeds are created using 3rd party tools (custom feed builders), and anyone can make one of them, too. I've tried Skyfeed, Bluesky Feed Creator and graze.social, and I'm sure there are others on the way.

Depending on the tool you use, you can make a feed of all posts meeting certain criteria, include human moderation or not, call in an AI to help, etc. The competition between custom feed builders means the feeds themselves are only going to get more powerful.

The competition between custom feed builders means the feeds themselves are only going to get more powerful.

Labellers apply labels to individual posts or entire accounts. Like custom feeds, anyone can create one, using a variety of tools, and anyone can subscribe to one if they want to see the label.

And then you can make a custom feed using that label, of course.

For example, I've subscribed to the "Jesse Singal follower" labeller, and it's remarkable how that label helps me deal with the rare toxic content I see on Bluesky (Mr Singal rapidly became the most blocked person on Bluesky). For my part, I was automatically labelled a user of occasional AI imagery (mea culpa).

Block/mute lists are a very specific sort of labeller: subscribing to them means you trust the labeller's judgement that their list of people is composed of people you want to block or mute, so they never appear in your timeline. These can make things feel a little echo-chambery, but it's the user's choice.

Starter packs: These package a list of up to 150 people, a feed of their posts plus (optionally) custom feeds relevant to the Pack's topic.

3rd party Bluesky apps: Because Bluesky is decentralised (below), you don't need to use the official Bluesky app: there's already an array of others to use, and they won't go the way of Tweetdeck, unilaterally shut down by X.

So what could this mean for your organisation?

Apart from improving your personal experience, these are useful tools for building communities.

A community manager, for example, could create and manage a custom feed to provide the community with a free-ranging discussion forum within the global conversation on Bluesky. Or use lists and labellers to highlight most valued members.

Personally, I see custom feeds as light, porous tools which complement a community's principal website, which hosts more in-depth conversations and collaborations. Because feeds are open (anyone can read them, even if who can post into them can be restricted) I think they sit somewhere between "closed discussion forum" and "Twitter as broadcast media", and so are best used to:

• help focus and raise attention on a topic,
• bring the community's activities and conversations to a wider audience interested in that topic
• pull new members and ideas from the global conversation into the community.

But this gets really interesting when those community websites are themselves part of that conversation, via ATmosphere integration (see 3., below).

2) Your identity, your data

If you've heard one thing about Bluesky, it's probably that it's decentralised. If you've heard two things about Bluesky, it's probably that it's not (really) decentralised.

Bluesky's launch stirred up passions on the Fediverse, and it got a little acrimonious until the grownups intervened in a series of blog posts of enormous length and complexity. I'll spare you the details. The key facts - on Bluesky:

• you own your identity: you can set your ID yourself if you own a web server, but most people get theirs from Bluesky when they sign up (like me, which is why I'm currently @mathewlowry.bsky.social). Others get theirs from their employer, like US Senators (see image) or NYTimes journalists, to establish their bonafides. And you can always move your identity elsewhere, because your network will follow seamlessly;
• you own your data: your posts are stored in a Personal Data Store (PDS). Again, most users will get theirs from Bluesky, but you can set it up yourself. Either way, if you decide to move, you take your data with you and the links won't break.

In this way Bluesky offers "credible exit": if the company (Bluesky Social PBC, or Public Benefit Company) suddenly metastases into another echo chamber for Nazis and conspiracy theorists, people can simply take their identities and data elsewhere and continue as before.

However, Bluesky is not as decentralised as the Fediverse. Bluesky ensures everyone sees everything they should, unlike the Fediverse. However, that requires infrastructure (a "relay") which is technically possible for anyone to build and run, but which is so huge that so far only Bluesky Social PBC has done so. Others plan to, however, and they're working on reducing the running costs.

Basically, decentralisation is a spectrum, not a Yes/No question

Basically, decentralisation is a spectrum, not a Yes/No question, and it's just one technical issue amongst many. Bluesky and the Fediverse made different choices, and I think there's room for both: Bluesky's choices means it can provide a global conversation with "credible exit", while the Fediverse provides completely independent "cozyweb" solutions, ideal for small communities.

So what could this mean for your organisation?

It's not technically difficult for your organisation to offer (trained) staff an ATProto identity and PDS - eg my Bluesky ID could become something like mathewlowry@myhub.ai, while US Senators are @lastname.senate.gov.

And/or your organisation could create a labeller, so that people who care to subscribe would see labels on your staff like "works@companyname" or "works@orgname".

Critically, when a staffperson leaves, they would simply transfer their ID and data to wherever they want: they'd lose that label, but they'd keep their identity, followers and content.

3) First app of many: welcome to the ATmosphere

Just as Mastodon is on the Fediverse, an information ecosystem where it and other apps use the ActivityPub protocol to interact, Bluesky is on the ATmosphere, the information ecosystem underpinned by the ATproto protocol.

And like Mastodon, Bluesky is not the only kid on its protocol block: in mid-2024 the Whitewind blogging platform launched, Instagram- & TikTok-like apps for sharing photos and videos are on the way, as is something similar to Nuzzle. There are already recipe-based social networks, chatroom apps, apps for helping people find their Twitter friends and to build bridges with Mastodon, as well as all sorts of fun apps to analyse individual profiles and personal networks.

Why? Because this is a permissionless ecosystem - anyone can build anything they like, and can access the Bluesky feed, without having to get Bluesky Social PBC's permission.

this is a permissionless ecosystem - anyone can build anything they like, without Bluesky Social PBC's permission

For me, I first glimpsed the ATmosphere's potential when I signed up to Whitewind. Essentially, you use your Bluesky ID - you don't need a "Whitewind account" - and your blog posts live in your Bluesky Personal Data Store. So if I decide to move my blog somewhere else, I can take myself and my content with me, and all my links keep working. I am not tied to Whitewind and I will not lose my content if they cease operating. I almost lost 15 years of blogging when BlogActiv.eu closed without warning, so this matters.

But that potential really shines when you start posting on Whitewind, because Whitewind and Bluesky conversations are cross-platform:

• when someone on Bluesky points to your Whitewind post, their Bluesky post appears as a comment on Whitewind (cf the pingbacks that turned the blogosphere into a giant social network, long ago)
• when someone comments on Whitewind, they have the option to post their comment on Bluesky (assuming they have an account).

So what could this mean for your organisation?

Remember how I mentioned communities could benefit from custom feeds? If those community websites were integrated with Bluesky like Whitewind:

• every site conversation could be interconnected to relevant conversations and people on Bluesky
• where they could be promoted via the corresponding custom feed, bringing the conversations to new people... and new people into the community.

And that, remember, is with just your website and Bluesky. As mentioned before, there are many other apps appearing in the ATmosphere. We're set for a few years of innovation as people experiment with different forms and apps, and I for one can't wait.