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.
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.
I understand the sentiment, and I might be naive, but I really do think the restriction is due to technical reasons. It is a purposefully slow go to market plan because the engineering team is small, the tech new, and they are not ready to serve millions of users.
It doesn’t look at all as something like Clubhouse was (which was exactly what you described). Some evidence is that a few people that I follow that got in say it looks empty (not “cool” or with everyone “that matters”), also the idea of customizable feed algorithm doesn’t align with the popularity contest strategy. And the rumors that Bluesky was having technical troubles after Twitter rate-limited users due to the high load.
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.
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.
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.
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
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])...
If you made a new social app that doesn't require an account you would not just get 100 million people to install it. Being able to sign in to an existing account isn't what caused the uptake.
But it isn't relevant. I could say that email has a billion+ existing users with an account that an app could utilize, but adding email signup to a hypothetical app doesn't just get you a ton of users.
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…
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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].
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.
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.
