11 March 2024
By Roger Kennedy
roger@TheCork.ie
Entertainment
The Bluesky social network is now open to everyone. But before you create an account, think (and research) if this is where you really want to be.
Screenshot youtube.com/@joinentre
Until now, Bluesky worked in a way that you could sign up on a waiting list for the social network to invite you (which took a very long time, and not everyone got an invite) or someone gave you a login code/invitation. That’s over now. What we’re dealing with in the rest of the text is – is it worth joining Bluesky? After that, we’ll explain what this rival (or alternative if you prefer) platform to X (formerly Twitter) has and whether you should open an account on it or not.
Why Did Bluesky Waive the Invitations?
On February 6, 2024, Bluesky announced that anyone can now join their platform. Previously, as we said, you had to know someone who was already using Bluesky to give you a code or wait months until you got an invite from Bluesky.
This sort of exclusive system was introduced to keep things under control while developing the platform and testing it with a smaller group of users. Bluesky Social (the official name of the platform; Bluesky was the initial name marking the social network protocol) is an alternative to X that gained more than four million users in its first year.
In the months since launching in February 2023, the Bluesky team has built custom feeds and moderation tools, improved mobile and browser apps, and added cool features like a new signup flow. However, some key features are still under construction.
Despite this, the platform has decided to open access to everyone. Although they claim that the platform is ready for anyone who wants to access it, they may just want to capitalize on public interest before it’s too late.
Should You Join Bluesky Now That It’s Open to Everyone?
Whether or not you should join the Bluesky social network depends on what you expect from the platform.
Those who received an invitation at least a couple of months prior to it becoming accessible to all were excited to see what it looked like but they quickly realized why Bluesky was still so exclusive.
Many features that you’re used to on other social networks were missing. Second, you have no acquaintances or friends on that network and the question is whether or not they’ll join it in the future. Furthermore, many of the contents were just “NSFW” spam (“Not Safe for Work” spam). At the time of being exclusive, the platform was still working out moderation issues, so a lot of users backed off pretty quickly and decided to wait until it was ready for the general public.
And that’s the biggest problem – people expect Bluesky to be just a better version of X. But it’s a different social platform built with a different goal – openness and user control.
Note: You can contribute what you want, see only what you choose, and filter out what you don’t want to see. But it requires a lot of continuous adjustment.
Bluesky is open source (mostly), decentralized (partially), and all about “moderation”. You have a first level of moderators who can issue warnings, flag illegal and unacceptable content, or remove abusive posts or user accounts. The next level is server-level administrators; you can change servers if you want (just like you can change countries). Finally, the so-called “community labeling” will allow you to create or adopt already customized sets of rules and labels to clean up your feed. It sounds complicated, but it’s not, at least when you start using Bluesky and see first-hand how this works.
What’s Bluesky?
Many unhappy consumers have been looking for an alternative to X since Elon Musk assumed ownership of the company in late 2022, sparking a plethora of worries and complaints. Rival social media sites have emerged in response, claiming to provide an experience akin to Twitter but without Musk’s baggage. Bluesky Social is one such service.
It’s a decentralized social network with features similar to those of X. It’s not a coincidence, either. Former CEO of Twitter and co-founder Jack Dorsey is a backer of the business. Initiated in 2019 while Dorsey was still the CEO of Twitter, Bluesky was intended to grow with support and investment from Twitter. But the two entities severed their links when Musk assumed power.
People are wondering if it’s worth joining Bluesky amid X’s unrest and drop in users and advertisers. Bluesky has been creating more talk lately. Even though Bluesky is totally free, attempting to register in the past has been difficult because, as we mentioned, you required a unique invite code, which wasn’t always available. However, Bluesky stopped being invite-only this February and is now available to anybody who wishes to sign up.
How Beneficial Bluesky Is for Business Owners
Bluesky sets itself apart from typical social networks by providing a fresh approach for marketers to interact authentically and sincerely with their target customers. Early adopters of Bluesky benefit from thought leadership, engagement standards setting, and specialty community connections before the platform becomes widely used.
Less commercial content and more in-depth discussions are encouraged on the platform, giving companies the opportunity to reinvent their content strategies and cultivate a devoted following around their ideas and beliefs. By enabling brands to use unique domains for their profiles, Bluesky helps them become more recognizable and credible online. By using a service like social media scheduling services, you can ensure a unified and effective digital marketing approach by managing your Bluesky account more easily in addition to other social media platforms.
All in all, brands can use Bluesky’s platform to strategically traverse the digital landscape while deviating from conventional social media tactics. Here’s how your company can use Bluesky to its advantage on a global level:
- Interact with specialized (niche) groups – brands belonging to industries such as, say, gambling very much benefit from targeting specific gaming communities, meaning that the best Irish online casinos in 2014 and other operators aiming to rank high at TopCasinoExpert and similar specialized platforms have an opportunity to stand out from the “crowd”
- Become a thought leader through quality content
- Make a custom domain
- Reduce the quantity of your promotion
- Take part in public conversations
How to Actually Enjoy Bluesky?
To enjoy Bluesky, you’d have to find and follow more people than on X because there’s no centralized algorithm curating content for you. It’s even encouraged to use third-party clients like GraySky or Deck.Blue to customize your feed and user experience.
Following custom feeds and finding good people to follow takes some effort and work. If you don’t care about that, Bluesky might not be your next platform to use.
For now, you can add “warning tags” to your posts and turn off replies to prevent abuse. This moderation is crucial because there’s a lot of “adult content” circulating on the platform. An open network is also very public in nature. Your profile, posts, likes, blocks and mute lists are public. There’s also no option to set your account to “private”. Plus, key features like DMs and hashtags that you might love aren’t here.
Final Thoughts
So, is it worth joining Bluesky now? If you want to invest time in a social platform that prioritizes openness and user control, it is. Bluesky definitely has potential.
But it’s still an emerging project that needs to be refined. If you’re not willing to spend time customizing your experience, Bluesky yet isn’t a complete replacement for Twitter or X. The question is if ever will be…