Bluesky Basics

In a world where algorithms control the information you’re exposed to, wouldn’t it be nice if you could control the algorithms? Well… you can with Bluesky.

What is Bluesky?

The easiest way to think of Bluesky is an open source Twitter alternative. Uh, yeah… what does that mean? Think of Bluesky like Twitter, in that it’s a microblogging platform where you can post up to 300 characters per post and you can also include links, images and videos. Oh… you meant what does it being open source mean?

Bluesky was built on the AT Protocol, which doesn’t mean anything to you if you don’t care about popping the hood on the tech, but in practice it means your social media isn’t controlled by the broligarch. A good analogy is e-mail. The reason your Yahoo! e-mail address and your corporate e-mail domain can send and receive messages to and from Gmail is because e-mail is built on an open protocol. The same with Bluesky. 

So what does that mean? Put simply, you control your audience and can take it with you like all the e-mails in your contact list. Already other developers have built other applications on the AT Protocol. For example, Flashes is an Instagram alternative and Skylight has a TikTok vibe. Both of these apps automatically leverage the network you have built on Bluesky (meaning all of your followers are automatically there) and vice versa. In short, wherever you go your network goes with you.

If you’re so inclined, this means you or anyone else can launch their own social platform or other tool/software using the AT Protocol and instantly reap the benefits of the open network. If you happen to have your own website, you can also self verify using your own domain name. For example, you can find me at @socaljourno.com.

What About Those Algorithms?

Earlier I mentioned you can control your algorithms on Bluesky… and you can! Rather than opening the app and getting whatever the social media overlords decide you should see, you can pick and choose your own feed(s) and even design your own. You can go even further and share your feed with other people. If you want a chronological feed, you can do that. If you want a feed of just kittens and puppies pictures, you can have that too.

Here are some of my favorite feeds that anyone can subscribe to: 

• Catch Up – These are the most popular posts from the last 24 hours.
• Best of Follows – This feed includes the top content from people you follow.
• Quiet Posters – These are people you follow who don’t frequently post so when they do you can find their posts here and they don’t get washed away by the flood of other incoming posts. 
• Gift Links/Gift Articles – This feed is stuffed with links to publications that bypass the various paywalls. I pay for a lot of news, and I still find this to be an indispensable feed.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. There are feeds that people have built for art, pets, food, coding, books, academia, space, medicine, MLB, anime, Star Trek, photography and so much more. 

Since I’m the COO of GymCastic, one of my interests is keeping up with the latest gymnastics news. A good way to do this is to start by subscribing to the Gymternet feed. This feed “curates all posts containing the word ‘gymnastics’ (without including ‘mental gymnastics’) and numerous other gymternet terms. I have also created my own feed #Gymternet which lists posts in descending order over the past seven days that includes the hashtag #gymternet. 

If you subscribe to one of these feeds and you don’t like the content it’s producing, you can tweak it by building your own. There are lots of third party feed builders available, such as SkyFeed, BlueskyFeedGenerator, Bluesky Feed Creator and more. 

How Do I Get Started?

Go to bsky.social and sign up. Then perhaps one of the biggest innovations that have helped the adoption of people moving over to Bluesky is the advent of Starter Packs. These are curated lists of people to follow based on your interests. Again, because this is an open platform anyone can create and share these Starter Packs; and moreover anyone can build a directory of Starter Packs. BlueskyStarterPack.com is a terrific resource to get started. Search for anything of interest (from Gymnastics to Humor and everything in between) and with one click you can begin following one or hundreds of people. 

Here are a few Starter Packs for gymnastics fans. 

• Gymnastics Media & Public Figures
• Flip for these Follows!
• Gymternet

Of course, you can view these starter packs and then pick and choose who you wish to follow from them. 

If you found this helpful, please let me know and I can write-up a more advanced user guide explaining more bells and whistles. And if you wish this intro was all just a comic, Bluesky has already got you covered.