Bluesky
Below is the transcript of a conversation that took place at home yesterday. My wife noticed that I was on my laptop early in the morning, which is unusual for me. So she made a decision she’d soon regret: asking me what I was up to.
Katherine: What are you doing?
Me: Signing up for a website.
Her: Which one?
Me: It’s called Bluesky. It’s like Twitter.
Her: But… you just…
Me: *sighs* I know.
I’m not sure how many text-based social media networks I have space for in my life, but I’m giving Bluesky a try because it’s where a lot of people I want to interact with are going. That’s the same reason I joined Mastodon nearly two years ago and Threads after that. I want to hang out with cool people online, and since Twitter lost its place as the go-to for that sort of thing, I’ve committed to at least trying to be where everyone else is.
The Bluesky interface is the most familiar I’ve seen from a post-Twitter social network. The onboarding was painless and almost instant, and I was even able to connect my domain name without any trouble. It’s been a fun place to hang out the past 24 hours, as the trendy social networks always are. Only time will tell how big a part of my online life the service will remain, though.
Personally, I’m rooting for ActivityPub to win out as the social media standard going forward. I love the idea of only needing one account to interact with people across services. Bluesky’s popularity and its alternative protocol adds a wrinkle to that fantasy, but maybe one day, the two will at least be able to communicate with one another.
In the meantime, I’ll be splitting my time between all of these services and looking out for cool people to hang out with on each. If you’re on Bluesky, I’d love to connect. You know what they say: the sky is always bluer on the other side.