Bluesky seems to have had a second birth recently, and I am surprised to say it has become my number 1 social network.

Let’s take a look at some of the coolest features, and how to get started.

What is Bluesky?

One of the reasons I am bullish about it is because it is more than just another social network. This gives it some long-term advantages that the others do not have.

If you go to bsky.app in your web browser or download the app from your smartphone app store, you will find a familiar-looking interface with a butterfly logo.

Signing up and using it as a Twitter alternative is a very common approach, and for most people outside of my community I would suggest going ahead and doing just that.

The interesting thing is the nerdy backstory. Bluesky is a front-end on top of the real technical stuff, which is an open system:

It is owned by Bluesky Social PBC, a public benefit corporation based in the United States.

Bluesky was developed as a reference implementation of the AT Protocol, an open communication protocol for distributed social networks. Bluesky Social promotes a composable user experience and algorithmic choice as core features of Bluesky.

Simply put, what they were developing was a way to build distributed social networks, and from that was born one example of such.

Uniquely this means there is no centralised algorithm or platform, and certainly, no thin-skinned billionaire, dictating who gets to see what.

Why Bluesky is better

You get to see what you want to see, and if you don’t like how it is sliced and diced.

As well as – gasp! – being able to see what the people you follow have posted chronologically, you can customise your following feed if you want to see replies/reposts/quotes.

You can even create your own lists or even feed(s) that other people can follow.

The platform offers a “marketplace of algorithms” where users can choose or create algorithmic feeds, user-managed moderation and labelling services, and user-made “starter packs” that allow users to quickly follow a large number of related accounts within a community or subculture.

Creating a feed doesn’t even require you to learn to code, there are tools that make it easier to generate feeds, starter packs, and block lists.

These custom feeds are a key way you can modify the experience to match exactly what you want to see and when:

Labelling services allow information to be added to the presentation of other users in the system, for example I signed up for one which presents politicians with who sponsors them, like a Nascar driver!

Starter packs allow you to mass-follow people in a niche, for example, “webcomics“. Being listed in these is a bit of a good/bad situation as often people will start following you without knowing who you are and then if you post stuff that is not, say, a webcomic you might get mixed responses. It does help onboard more people to the network and avoid the blank feed of doom, though.

Getting Started

Simply sign up and start following people.

The search is actually pretty good as a good place to find interesting topics and users.

Like other social networks, you can pin posts to the top of your account. Either post an introduction, an extension of your profile, or a good example of the content you share:

• Navigate to the post.
• Click the three dots.
• Hit Pin to your profile.

Like any social network, the power is in the network, so as well as starter packs, start following folks using tools to help you find your old friends and contacts such as follow-finder and chrome extensions.

Notice in the Sky Follower Bridge UI it says use an App Password, this is a nice feature of Bluesky where you don’t have to give your actual username and password over to third-party tools, and you can revoke their access at any time.

If you find some bots/weirdos/trolls are targeting you, make healthy use of block lists but also check out the privacy and interaction features. For example, in the three dots under each post you can set what people can and can’t do or see.

Choosing a Name/Handle

The AT Protocol offers a domain name-based handle system within Bluesky, allowing users to self-verify an account’s legitimacy and identity by proving ownership of a domain name.

This is another neat feature. On most social networks I use either “@chrisgarrett” or a handle related to the website that I am representing. Bluesky allows you to use your actual domain as your handle, therefore on Bluesky I am @chrisg.com!

Using your domain is a simple text addition to your domain setup. I am happy to do this for free for any of my clients.

There will be no more land grabs (hopefully) and less impersonation (though the knowledge of this domain system hasn’t quite trickled out to everyone, so there still is some impersonation).

Bluesky for Marketers

Unlike other social networks, not only do I get more engagement on this network than the others, despite having way fewer followers, Bluesky encourages links.

Yes, they do not throttle your visibility when you send people away from their platform!

You might wonder how they will survive without keeping people doom-scrolling endlessly. Apparently, the plan is to cover most of their overhead by paying members who get actual benefits rather than a checkmark. I am cautiously optimistic.

Until they add a “Save” option, someone created a neat bookmarking feed. After adding the feed, just add a pin emoji as a reply and the thread will appear in your “Pins” bookmarks feed.

I’m not a huge fan of making my bookmarks public and polluting someone’s feed with them, but a third-party Bluesky apps called deck.blue and klearsky have bookmarks built in amongst other nice features.

Feeds/Lists are super valuable for keeping up to date with a niche topic, and unlike when I joined last summer, most niches are now represented. You can follow other people’s lists or make your own. For example, I see a bunch of 3D printing folks via a list so I don’t have to see their stuff in my main feed.

On the other hand, you might decide that you DO need this content in your main feed, therefore there is an option for that!

Automating Bluesky

My followers will have seen I have played with the developer tools that Bluesky offer and found them good. I will for sure be creating a bunch of tools, and probably a WordPress plugin unless I find one that does what I need first.

This also means that a lot of tools are being created, you can see many of them here in the Github list:

Over to you!

Anything cool that I missed? Hit me up and let me know!