Where the skies are blue
Last updated: Nov 17, 2024.
I created a Bluesky account on April 23, 2023, and then kinda forgot about it. A year and a half later, I logged back in. There have been waves of excitement about Bluesky -- and I really hope this is the one that sticks.
Twitter had been my tech home. It was a vital part of my career; connecting with people, making friends, learning new things. But it increasingly became a place I didn't want to be, optimized for angertainment, and I withdrew. I made my account private and became less and less active.
Right now, Bluesky feels like my favorite things about old tech Twitter, and it's warming my cynical millennial heart. As Kelsey Hightower said, "I want to be where the community is, and the community, not the platform, owns that decision."
I've been accumulating useful bits in the month-ish I've been back on the platform and thought I'd consolidate a reference here. I'll keep adding to it.
User stats
- Jazco.dev: Bluesky post count and author stats.
- Clearsky: See what starter packs / lists you're on. (Starter packs are created by users to recommend follows and feeds.)
- SkyKit: More user stats including content analysis.
- Bluesky User Count: Total Bluesky users live count (powered by Jaz's stats).
- Twexit: Acknowledged but unlinked. Very often referenced right now, but marked as "not intended for public use" / "testing only, not for general use".
Community tools
Migrate / find people
- Sky Follower Bridge: Check if anyone you follow on Twitter is on Bluesky.
- Bluesky Directory: Search for starter packs.
- Bluesky Migration: A guide on migrating to Bluesky from Twitter.
- Bluesky network analyzer: Find people followed by lots of the people you follow (but not you).
Misc
- awesome-bluesky: GitHub repo with even more Bluesky tools.
- Skyware: A collection of libraries for developing on Bluesky.
- Blockenheimer: Mass blocking tool.
- Convert a BSky Starter Pack to a List.
- Serve a profile as an RSS feed. (Can also append /rss).
Custom feeds
- Mutuals: Posts from users who are following you back.
- Popular with friends: A mix of popular content from accounts you follow and content that your follows like.
- 📌: A feed of posts you've replied to with a 📌.
- Quiet Posters: Posts from your quieter followers.
- My Bangers: A feed of your most popular posts sorted by likes.
- The 'Gram: All the pictures posted by people you follow.
- Followers: A feed of posts from non-moots (non-mutuals) who follow you (uno reverse card). Will only load posts from the past 24 hours.
Getting started
- Tips and Tricks for Bluesky Search (Bsky blog)
- Whiteboard explainer video for Bluesky beginners (YouTube)
- Why try Bluesky? (Visual graphic explainer).
- How to set your domain as your handle (Bsky blog)
- Buy domain *directly from Bluesky (powered by Namecheap) (@mk.gg)
- Setting up a Bluesky custom domain handle on Netlify (Cecy.ai)
- "Bluesky Custom Domain" Netlify Extension (@eduardoboucas)
- How to embed a Bluesky post on your website or blog (Bsky blog)
- Embed Bluesky posts in Astro pages (@mk.gg)
About Bluesky (company / platform)
- Inside Bluesky's Engineering Culture (Pragmatic Engineer newsletter)
- Federation is the future of social media, says Bluesky CEO Jay Graber (The Verge)
- How to self-host all of Bluesky except the AppView (for now).
- Dan Abramov on Working at Bluesky, React, and the Social Internet ("How About Tomorrow" podcast)
- Common Bluesky misconceptions from Dan Abramov.
- See the names of all the Bsky mushroom servers.
- See which mushroom server you're on.
About AT Protocol
- How atproto works (Bsky thread)
- Bluesky's AT Protocol: Pros and Cons for Developers (The New Stack)
- The AT Protocol Developer Ecosystem (Bsky blog)
- Federation Architecture Overview (Bsky blog)
- Bluesky and the AT Protocol: Usable Decentralized Social Media (White paper)
Articles
- The Great Migration to Bluesky Gives Me Hope for the Future of the Internet (404 Media)
- Why Bluesky Remains The Most Interesting Experiment In Social Media, By Far (Techdirt)
- Bluesky brings the fun, weird vibes of old Twitter back to life (Vox)
- Is BlueSky the new Twitter, and if so is that a good thing? (The Torment Nexus)
Cool explorations
- Aurora: A visualization of the social network Bluesky as of November 7, 2024 (at time of writing).
- Nightsky: Visualizes activity around Bluesky as a dynamic night sky.
- Emojirain: Watch emojis (from Bluesky posts) rain down in real time.
Cover image: From bluesky-migrate.com