Bluesky (bsky.social)

[pupHawaii]

anyone on Bluesky - bsky.social ?

i'm puphawaii there .. 

[NLbear]

what is it?

[UKFFBBBtm]

Never heard of it

[partying.hard]

A couple of my friends are on it. But I’ve never ever checked it out. Would be interested in hearing what the gay fetish scene is like there.

[BootmanLA]

Bluesky is a pseudo-clone* of the basics of Twitter, developed in part by former Twitter people. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that Twitter does, but it also doesn't have a nutty nazi-and-apartheid-apologizing, transphobic, insecure, antisemitic billionaire running it and making decisions on a whim, either.

The user base is a fraction of the size of Twitter's, but it's growing. Right now, there are two main ways to join: You can submit a waitlist request, from which they regularly pull batches of applicants and make them members; or an existing BlueSky member may have an "invite code" s/he can give you that lets you bypass the line, so to speak. (I assume the reason for that is new members who already know existing members will more quickly form networks of followers and people they follow, so as to generate discussion (which, in turn, creates a reason for companies to want to advertise).

I've seen a fair number of guys who have Twitter accounts with lots of gay male content also begin posting (or switch to posting) on BlueSky, so there's no issue around posting nudity.

One thing that looks promising: BlueSky is one of the key partners in an effort to establish a new standard for interoperability for social media. Right now, if you want to send a message to someone and all you have is his Twitter address, you have to either be on Twitter or sign up for Twitter to do that. Ditto for Instagram, or whatever. The idea for social media interoperability is for the standards to work more like email: you don't have to have the same program or service; all you need is the person's social media address (which might be MyName@bluesky.social or OtherPerson@otherservice.social or SomeoneElse@yetanotherplace.social).

Just like right now, to offer email service to people, you basically have to support some established standards and protocols like SMTP - so that a gmail user can contact someone who still uses AOL mail and they can both write to people at corporate addresses. That doesn't mean that WITHIN a given provider, you can't enhance the standards or offer additional features that are "filtered out" when email goes off to another service; it just means anyone can get the message, and any attachments. That's how this would be for social media, as long as two social media apps (say, BlueSky and Twitter) supported the new standard, my BlueSky account could be followed by someone on Twitter and vice versa, without having to have an account on each service. 

Mind you, this is only in the early stages and no such standards have been worked out among the key players, but they're in development.

 

*I say pseudo-clone because Bluesky doesn't yet support a lot of things Twitter has long done, like posting video clips or direct messages (DMs). 

[LoadHunter612]

On 11/24/2023 at 4:31 PM, pupHawaii said:

anyone on Bluesky - bsky.social ?

i'm puphawaii there .. 

@loadhunter612

[LoadHunter612]

14 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that Twitter does

just to be clear, it's currently in beta.  hence the restriction on members.  everything else said was spot on (especially: but it also doesn't have a nutty nazi-and-apartheid-apologizing, transphobic, insecure, antisemitic billionaire running it and making decisions on a whim)

[pupHawaii]

On 11/24/2023 at 7:05 PM, NLbear said:

what is it?

Bluesky (bsky.social) was started by Jack Dorsey - who also started twitter.   It is growing very slowly because it's not open to everyone - you either need an invite or you join a waitlist and wait.  They just hit 1mil users last month or this month, so there isn't a lot of anything.   I've been finding people to follow by looking at who other people are following - so it's a little slow.  So getting a lot of followers quickly isn't going to happen.  But I'm thinking of it as a back-up in case twitter just implodes.  There is NO messaging system in place at this time - which is frustrating.  There is a lot of "likes" to posts - but very little reposting and very little commenting to posts.   But it's interesting to be at the beginning of it.

[GingerLoadChaser]

@gingerpig.bsky.social

[horndoggy]

@buddyboy.bsky.social

And I some invites if people are interested.

[bbfarm]

@adbb.bsky.social

not sure what to post there yet . . .