At last, a single page setting out the What and Why of Blacksky, which "builds infrastructure for social groups to control how they show up online: how their feeds work, how harm is addressed, and how costs are covered. Instead of one-size-fits-all rules set by a company with growth targets, Blacksky enables groups to govern themselves, and pool r…

"We’ve built a network of scientists and researchers active on Bluesky. The goal is to better understand how this group of users interact on the platform... we arrived at a science-oriented network of 17,980", computed centrality measures to identify influential members, and created an interactive 3d visualisation.They also provide details of the …

"Bluesky posts about science garner more likes and reposts than similar ones on X... according to the first large-scale analysis of science content on Bluesky... suggest Bluesky users engage with posts more than do users of X... The results were posted as a preprint on arXiv last month and have not been peer reviewed.""Interactions on Bluesky wer…

Collection of posts from media publishers on the traffic and engagement from Bluesky compared to X, Threads, etc. Image: Similarweb's report, which also said:"Threads generated 24.5 million outgoing referrals in November, but 42% of that traffic was to sister site instagram.com. Bluesky generated 38.6 million outgoing visits, spread more evenly ac…

When this was written there were 23m Bluesky users: "Some publishers report traffic and conversion rates three to four times higher compared with platforms like Threads and X, despite Bluesky’s smaller user base.... EUobserver received 3,800 unique visitors from Bluesky (with 3,300 followers) compared to 1,320 from X (with 203,000 followers)...Fo…

X is still larger but very regularly Bluesky easily eclipses it in terms of research being shared.

Very first post on the ATmosphere Health Index

"decentralized approaches come with their own trade-offs, and therefore multiple architectures exist... we conduct the first large-scale analysis of Bluesky... [which] decomposes and opens the key functions of the platform into subcomponents that can be provided by third party stakeholders".The intros of Fediverse and Nostr provide a useful spectr…

A 2024 paper from the Bluesky team where they "introduce the architecture of Bluesky and the AT Protocol, and explain how the technical design of Bluesky is informed by our goals: enable decentralization by having multiple interoperable providers for every part of the system; make it easy for users to switch providers; give users agency over the c…

This study examines:"the shift in the scientific community from X to Bluesky, its impact on scientific communication, and consequently on social metrics", following the Academic Twitter migration. Is there "evidence of a community shift", and if so "examine the differences in values and indicators..."? "provide valuable insights into whether Blue…

Altmetric's blog post announcing that they had "expanded its tracking capabilities by integrating Bluesky" when there were "over 20 million users".

This preprint "looks at the dynamics of this migration" from X to Mastodon of academics: using "publicly available user account data, we track the posting activity of academics on Mastodon over a one year period... gathered follower-followee relationships ... finding that the subset of academics ... were well-connected. However, this strong intern…

"Jack Dorsey ... invested $10 million ... fund experimental open source projects and other tools that could ultimately transform the social media landscape." Original focus nostr, but now "will experiment with other tools, too, like ActivityPub... as well as Cashu.""operating like a “community of hackers,”... could include new consumer social apps…

Some thoughts from a neuroscientist who's been kicking Bluesky's tyres: "The scientific community is once again shifting platforms... Between Mastodon’s ideals and Bluesky’s usability, we are faced with a complex landscape of compromises".Background: first he left X for Mastodon following Musk's purchase"over time, activity on Mastodon — at least …

"the next era of social media—built in Europe, run on our cloud, ruled by our laws... Social media is critical infrastructure, and a vital piece of the European tech sovereignty agenda... we need to build infrastructure ... on the AT Protocol... We have a plan for immediate action that can begin having an impact in 2025".Part of Free Our Feeds, …

Mike Masnick notes, as the "Bluesky is dying" discourse moves into it's 3rd? week, that it's "a bit odd: when something is supposedly dying or irrelevant, journalists can’t stop writing about it". But the premise of these critiques is wrong as they "fundamentally misunderstand what people want from social media and who gets to decide what constitu…

"Deer.social is a soft fork of the official Bluesky client, offering enhanced features, customizable toggles, and a focus on high-impact improvements for power users" as options you can toggle on, like the ability to "see through quote blocks and detachment (nuclear block for quotes/reply chains)", ignore " !no-unauthenticated labels", which I thi…

In late April I was in Hamburg for Ahoy! 2025, the first European conference dedicated to the ATmosphere — the information ecosystem built atop of ATproto, the protocol underpinning Bluesky.

In late April I was in Hamburg for Ahoy! 2025, the first European conference dedicated to the ATmosphere - the information ecosystem built atop of ATproto, the protocol underpinning Bluesky. I proposed a couple of ideas for the unconference sessions, and came away with content for at least 5 posts, none of which I've found time to write.

A deep dive into the April 2025 "censorship" on Turkish Bluesky illustrates that government censorship on ATmosphere apps is limited and will become even less effective as more people exploit its decentralised nature.Context in brief:March 2025, the Turkish "government ordered X to restrict access to various X accounts ... associated with the prot…

"Skeets is a 3rd party iOS / iPad OS client for Bluesky" which I saw at the Ahoy conference. It's a good example of how Bluesky is more than a X alternative: it can be used by any (iOS-carrying) Bluesky user, but offers other features than Bluesky PBC's own app, including:"Keep reading positionEdit postsPost notificationsBookmarks DraftsPush Notif…

"How would MyHub.ai evolve to become part of the ATmosphere?" - One of my suggested conversation topics at the Ahoy conference, April, 2025.

"Let's build a tool to help large organisations coordinate their Bluesky footprint, helping them get the most out of the platform" - One of my suggested conversation topics at the Ahoy conference, April, 2025.

Last month I published a couple of posts on X and Bluesky. They make a nice pair, so I'm including both, below, and taking this opportunity to ask for your perspective. I'd really value getting you and your organisation's views on both platforms in 2025, and I'd be happy to answer any questions in return.

If, like many, you think Bluesky is "Twitter, but with less Nazis", this post is for you.

"a type-safe library to build automation at the top of ATProto/Bluesky API... to make automating actions on Bluesky both friendly and highly flexible... a domain-specific language (DSL) and builder pattern abstraction ... to streamline common sequences of actions (like searching posts, replying, following, liking, etc.) which typically require jug…

"Sill shows the most popular links being shared by accounts you follow on Bluesky and Mastodon", linking through to "the individual posts... with what people said about" them. You can sort (“newest” or “most popular”), "hide reposts, and limit posts to the last 3, 6, 12, or 24 hours".Built in response to the death of the link: “On Instagram and Ti…

"Blacksky Algorithms, the team behind Blacksky and rsky, is now officially Blacksky Algorithms Inc", a Delaware C-Corp with its own fiscal host, and bigger ambitions."Blacksky will continue to rely on voluntary, member-supported subscriptions while also building and hosting technical infrastructure for developers, communities, and teams".Short-ter…

More evidence that science is thriving on Bluesky: "Seventy per cent of [almost 6,000] Nature readers who responded to an online poll are using the social-media platform Bluesky...53% said they used to be on X but have now left...55% of respondents to the question ‘What do you use Bluesky for?’ said ...to connect with other scientists, keep up to …

I've been cleaning out a few rotten systems recently.