Bluesky Experience
Yet another place, but is it the good place?
I don’t know how long I’ve been on Bluesky, many months, possible one year. To be frank, I was not particularly impressed with it, and in particular, the posts I saw there. It seemed to me to be a clique of people posting vapid declarations with no value (to me). I belive in value-added on these text plus image platforms. On Mastodon, I see a lot of value every day, on many topics. I feel more in control there. It has some great features, like the ability to import accounts to follow in a file with just a few clicks. In passing, I built a page called Fediverse Fans where you can search for accounts by interest of language. You can add yourself, then edit or delete your entry at will. That page allows you to choose any number of accounts and download a file ready to import to Mastodon. But I’m not writing this to talk about Mastodon, as much as I like it.
Bluesky has some great features. Like Mastodon (and Twitter) you can mute or filter words and names, and this helps build a feed you’ll appreciate more, without mentions of things you do not wish to see, but still follow people and read their posts on other topics. You can build a feed, which is basically like subscribing to one or more hashtags and add other conditions, such as who is allowed to post to the feed. In other words, on a curated feed about golf, only certain accounts are allowed to post to that feed. Anyone can use the #golfers hashtag, but only posts from the people you allowed will be visible in the feed. One of the strongest features of Bluesky is called Starter Packs. Currently, up to 150 accounts can be added to a SK. If someone follows a link to the SK, the will see the list of all accounts and have the possibility of looking through it and following one by one the ones you think you might want to follow. You can also follow the entire list. The Bands, Artists and Musicians Starter Kit is a good example. The creator has sought out people who fall under this category and added in 37 SK, over 3,000 musicians!
Normally, you’d see between 50 and 140 more accounts below the first one, the person who created it. I believe someone has created a Starter. Kit like feature for Mastodon and that is excellent news. I saw mostly garbage when I arrived on Bluesky, but had there already been these kits, I would have been able to start a much better feed according to my personal interests.n As I write this, there are 107,000 starter packs on Bluesky
You can search through the directory without a Bluesky account. Long story short, as there are many other features of Bluesky, it’s easier to get rolling quicker there than previous platforms. It is currently ad-free and free to use. However, I must add that Bluesky is owned by a company and therefore its future is not known. Will it have subscriptions with different levels of features (this has been rumored), or ads, or will it be scooped up by venture capital? No one can give a definitive answer to those questions, but sooner or later there will be a need to finance the servers and staff. Unlike Twitter, Mastodon, Spoutible, and whatever else is still out there, Mastodon is the only platform that is not owned by any one person or body.
If I see comments that mention features I haven’t included or any other correction or addition, I will happily add that to this text with credit to the person who contributes it.
I am randulo.com on Mastodon and Bluesky. That is a domain name I have owned for years and I now use it wherever possible.
