Bluesky: Building a Social Internet

by doener • 3 years ago

28 51 3 years ago

ggm• 3 years ago

I've seen a line of reasoning here (hn) that threads has stolen mindshare and impetus, and bluesky will be seen as "reactive" rather than innovative respective of planned intent and outcome.

Basically, marketing not technology will win. That, and instant signing on by uplift of the existing meta user base.

Google+ lost out on drive and will to live. It was a nice experience. Nice guys, came second in the race. They lost impetus, and they lost c* backing. Bluesky at least won't have that problem, it's the core product not a nice-to-have.

paulgb2• 3 years ago

As I see it there are really two twitters: consumption twitter and conversation twitter. Consumption twitter is where people go to follow celebrities, athletes, news publications, brands, etc. Most twitter users don’t post, they belong to consumption twitter.

Then there’s conversation twitter. It’s smaller but it was there from the beginning, even before the celebrities showed up in force.

It seems to me that Threads will capture the consumption twitter market. I’m far from convinced that Threads will capture the conversation twitter market. So far, Bluesky feels to me the most like early twitter, community-wise.

threeseed3• 3 years ago

I’m far from convinced that Threads will capture the conversation twitter

It really depends on what you're discussing and the tone you're looking for.

Threads is already discouraging the type of brawling, political discussions you get on Twitter.

But it's amazing if you're wanting to talk about entertainment, photography, sports etc as the tone is more fun and positive courtesy of all of the Instagram people and the assertive moderation.

whyenot• 3 years ago

marketing not technology will win

As it should. No matter how amazing the technology may be, a social network that almost nobody uses is a dud. IMO every day that Bsky stays in private beta it is losing more potential users. Marketing is more important than tech. Look at Threads, there is nothing particularly revolutionary about it’s tech, but in large part thanks to marketing and seeding the platform with well known users, it appears to be off to a great start.

jitl• 3 years ago

G+ felt pretty dead and lifeless when I joined during beta. It’s major innovation was “circles” - tools to share to a smaller percentage of your contacts.

Bluesky does not feel dead or lifeless, it’s much more lively than Mastodon because it isn’t fragmented by default, and the user-designed feed algorithms are a cool way to discover new conversations.

unmole• 3 years ago

For a brief period around 2012/2013, G+ was awesome. It was the best way of following people who shared your interests. If Facebook was for keeping in touch with people you went to highschool with, G+ was for keeping in touch with people you wished you went to highschool with.

explorigin• 3 years ago

What all these technologies had in common is they allowed people to freely interact and create content, without a single intermediary.
Sign up for the Bluesky private beta.

Anyone else see the irony here?

Confiks2• 3 years ago

The wording could have been better (and the whole private beta thing as well).

For what it's worth, the protocol and data model is open and designed for redistribution [1], and the event stream of messages is freely available without login [2]. It's quite similar to Secure Scuttlebutt (which has the most beautiful protocol guide itself [3]) including the disadvantages that come with radical publication – for example described in this 2018 pre-LLM Facebook v. Cambridge Analytica-era comment [4].

[1] https://atproto.com/specs/data-model

[2] https://firesky.tv/

[3] https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16877892

unshavedyak3• 3 years ago

Well damn, that kinda interests me now. As i sit here and develop an app for ActivityPub.. i'm kinda puzzled at how ATP feels like it fell so far behind.

Is there any hope for it now i wonder?

enumjorge• 3 years ago

I thought maybe they had opened up account creation, but it’s still behind a waitlist. I put my name down several weeks ago. Unless I missed the invite, they seem to be stingy about giving them out. If this is still mostly unavailable to the public why post it on HN again?

pelagic_sky• 3 years ago

Bluesky is dead in the water. There was a point where people were talking about it and wanted in. No one (in my social sphere) is talking about it anymore. I even mentioned it at work (FAANG) the other day and most people haven’t even heard of it. I’d love for it to be a thing. But history dictates they missed the opportunity.

paulgb2• 3 years ago

I’ve worked at two FAANGs and while I respect my former colleagues, I wouldn’t consider them harbingers of what’s cool.

dleeftink• 3 years ago

If you/we/other folk want it to be a thing, shouldn't we at least try to not frame it as a 'dead in the water' piece of tech?

Seeing how HN has a way of planting seeds in the minds of potential early adoptors, framing it as DOA may be the self-fulfilling prophecy we want to avoid if we want changes to unfold within our heavily centralised social media sphere.

jsnell• 3 years ago

Most people on HN don't have any vested interest in the success or failure of BlueSky. That's a good thing. It means we can actually give our honest opinions rather than equivocate in order to prop up a dead project in a kind of virtual recreation of Weekend at Bernie's.

Honestly, even without Threads I would not bet on BlueSky to be the winner in this space or even to be viable. The team got really lucky having the right product at the right time, and failed completely to capitalize on it. Or actually worse, they seemed to not even try to capitalize on it. Even trying and failing would have been bette.r

azakai• 3 years ago

My experience is exactly the opposite. Most of my social sphere has already moved to Bluesky. Also most of the top posters I used to follow on Twitter have either migrated or post on both. As a result I've been spending more time on Bluesky than Twitter recently. It's the future.

But you are right that while it remains invite-only it is limited. The real test will happen when they open the floodgates.

tiffanyg2• 3 years ago

I don't think it's quite that 'settled' (although, comically, I made my own [much worse] overstatement in a comment this morning).

But, the landscape is certainly a LOT less friendly, at this point. Threads has obviously sucked the oxygen completely out of the room, so to speak, for the moment. Bluesky is likely consigned to a much more niche position, and may have difficulty surviving.

While I think your conclusion is a bit strong at the moment, within 1 - 3 months, it'll probably be far clearer. In particular, depending on how Threads is actually functioning ... if "Meta" plays it smart (and they do seem to be doing a surprisingly clever job, so far) in catering (enough) to users for that initial buy-in ... (the classic "first hit is free" of drug dealers everywhere [though, I don't consider these platforms to be straight-up just person-wrecking drugs, that use-case does hold across plenty of the population, I'd argue])...

threeseed3• 3 years ago

I think it's pretty clear now.

Threads is the fastest growing social network and app in history and by now has ~100m users.

Network effects will take care of the rest.

jsbisviewtiful• 3 years ago

I’ve been in the beta for a while and so far I don’t find it useful or entertaining. It’s also really quiet, with only one account I follow consistently updating. This week I started considering deleting my account…

COGlory• 3 years ago

Has Bluesky addressed why not ActivityPub?

Confiks2• 3 years ago

https://atproto.com/guides/faq#why-not-use-activitypub

unshavedyak3• 3 years ago

Man, I might get behind that if it felt more open. Instead I have to compare it to the thriving ecosystem on ActivityPub and I just don’t have interest in developing on ATP.

lexandstuff3• 3 years ago

I cannot believe that Bluesky still hasn't opened its doors. There was a huge window of opportunity for them that now seems firmly shut.

maxverse• 3 years ago

Most techy people I know are holding out for an invite code. I'd like to think Bluesky is trying to do it right and thinking in the long term.

lexandstuff3• 3 years ago

I was holding out for an invite code.

I wanted one because everyone I enjoyed following on Twitter was on Bluesky, singing its praise.

Now they're all on Threads, so I'm no longer interested in the invite code.

add-sub-mul-div• 3 years ago

Think of it as an opportunity to have dodged the eternal September that's moving over to Threads right now.

There's nothing wrong with a soft launch and there's nothing wrong with a community growing deliberately rather than for the sake of growing, and suffering the inevitable watering down that follows.

tiffanyg2• 3 years ago

Exactly!

I do think that while "Threads" reduces reach, clamoring to get in, etc., OTOH, it will suck up most of the "worst of social media".

This may mean that Bluesky grows slowly and ends up with the best discussions, insights, expertise, etc.

I don't know if that will really work out / come to pass, nor how "viable" that could be on the business side (though Bluesky WAS founded as a "PBLLC" - so, immediately signaling no pursuit of the growth at any cost mentality that makes everything garbage constantly)... There are obvious reasons for and against this scenario, such as the strong inclination people have for "single sign-on" / "one app for purpose X" type structures (i.e., using both Threads and Bluesky might be too annoying), though, it does seem like Threads is planned to have some type of "fediverse" integration. Of course, knowing "Meta" and Psychoberg, I'll be surprised if that's even initially angled at integrating with, say, Bluesky and creating more value for everyone ... Unless the goal is simply to "embrace, extend, extinguish" ultimately, to create more value for "the (Zucker)Borg".

unshavedyak3• 3 years ago

What’s the draw to BlueSky? I don’t get it. Just based on their invite behavior it feels very walled garden, so I focus on ActivityPub.

Am I missing something?

lexandstuff3• 3 years ago

Let's be honest: the draw was that it was Twitter minus Elon and the blue-check lunatics.

Now Threads is that.

Everyone I enjoyed following on Twitter is on Threads, so I don't need Twitter, and I certainly don't need Bluesky.

housemusicfan• 3 years ago

Getting people to come over to BlueSky is like trying to convince your normie friends to switch to Linux because it's built on software freedom. It isn't going to happen.

soneca2• 3 years ago

That is Mastodon for me. I saw a lot of people out of my tech bubble asking about and interested in joining BlueSky.

Only that no one around me have invites. I signed to the waitlist the first I saw them on HN, still nothing.

zhte415• 3 years ago

Count me out of yet another cool clique where invites from friends get you a foot in the door of a social popularity pageant. And tracking, of course, we must know who knows who.

Insepid, undemocratic, uninclusive. Deeply unsocial.

drewg123• 3 years ago

Even my normie friends were begging for invite codes the last I checked. That might have died down since Threads launched though.

jaylittle• 3 years ago

I got three BlueSky invite codes, in case anybody wants em:

Edit: All gone, thanks for playing!

mvkel• 3 years ago

If anyone has an invite, I'd love one!

tapoxi2• 3 years ago

If Threads follows through and implements ActivityPub, ATProto is dead in the water. ATProto may be superior in some ways (namely account portability) but ActivityPub is "good enough" and there's already a bunch of applications using it in a distributed fashion.

threeseed3• 3 years ago

They have the "threads.net" profile badge which suggests ActivityPub is definitely coming.

Also I suspect it's a high priority for Meta as it blunts any anti-competitive attack from regulators. Complying with open, interoperable standards is usually far more important than whether or not you're a monopoly. And the EU in particular already has the mechanism to demand these companies comply.

BlueSky could end up making a huge mistake by not adopting ActivityPub.

tapoxi2• 3 years ago

I think you're right. It bypasses regulators and realistically it's going to capture the majority share of the fediverse anyway because it removes the complexity of picking a Mastodon instance.

loteck• 3 years ago

I wonder what the demographics of Bluesky are under their longish term strategy of invite-only, and I wonder what it says about the future of digital society.

Given the history of invite-only societies, one or two particular outcomes seems highly likely. Is this the future of social?

pessimizer• 3 years ago

I hope so. We need more spaces where we can speak in private rather than more places where we can speak in public.

Plenty of people are making a living from being public, though, so they will always need a public communication outlet. But maybe celebrities have been scared off by getting constantly cancelled and attacked, and would prefer that most people get news about them second-hand, through friendly intermediaries.

ramesh31• 3 years ago

(Invite only)

pfist• 3 years ago

I understand and even applaud their decision to grow carefully and deliberately. At the same time, I have been on the waitlist for a year or so and I am eager to try it out.

Of all the Twitter competitors, I find Bluesky the most intriguing. I love the idea of managing my own feeds and connecting my own domain. There is a sense of control and privacy that I find appealing. It remains to be seen if Bluesky can deliver on its vision, but I look forward to experiencing it for myself.

AustinDev• 3 years ago

A year long waitlist is equivalent to dead in the water imo. They'll never win.

romusha• 3 years ago

Bluesky: Building a failed app!

SV_BubbleTime• 3 years ago

Step1: Generate some buzz, then don’t let people in.

ChrisArchitect• 3 years ago

Something new here?

agentgumshoe3• 3 years ago

I think it's interesting that we expect each new social app to be 'the next big thing' and a failure if not replacing Twitter/Insta/Threads/Whatever by tomorrow.

If they get decent user growth and remain profitable, having the right features and usability will make them a more appealing option as time goes on. It doesn't need to be overnight unless it's funded by VC cash that demands it be so...

Personally, I don't want another Twitter. I'd be more than happy for Reddit to sort it's stupidity out and good old forums to continue to provide organised hangouts for interest groups.

Bluesky: Building a Social Internet

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