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Last week, Bluesky opened its doors. After a year in her closed, invite-only beta, anyone who wants to can now sign up for an account with just their email address.

Even if the value of the invitation has dropped somewhat in recent months (I have 5 unused seats, not that I want to try), it's clear there was latent demand. In just two days, the service received more than 1 million new registrations. By the way, since Bluesky released his iOS app last February, it took him over three months to reach his 70,000 user count.

This slow growth has also been a blessing for Blue Sky. On the other hand, the beta did its job, allowing the company to iterate on the service based on feedback from a smaller but more engaged user base than it might otherwise have.

Last year, the company built a suite of moderation tools that enable a “decentralized” approach to social networking, where users can voluntarily opt in or out of content such as nudity, violence, and hate speech. Launching on Android and the web. And by adopting a butterfly as our own version of Twitter's bird, we created a consistent visual identity. Meanwhile, Elon Musk's site destroyed its own visual shorthand in response, replacing some, but not all, Twitter branding with a double-strike 𝕏.

But the slow burn also meant that Bluesky never really got his moment in the sun. For a year now, I've been listening to the words I often hear from new users. It was about getting excited to be granted access to the service, then being disappointed when you realized there was less content than there was in Twitter's heyday.

In some cases, it's a memory trick. A Bluesky feed that follows 50 people will be less crowded than a Twitter feed that follows 500 people, and for many power users of the latter service, everyone they follow will be his 2 Gone are the days when you could ride a decker bus. Many longtime Twitter users probably don't remember what it was like to have a quiet feed or have to find new people to follow. And those things could cause people to push back from new social networks like Bluesky, just as they have bothered many people. I stumble when registering on Twitter itself.

(That's why Facebook's People You May Know feature is so incisive.) The biggest hurdle for social networks isn't getting people to sign up, it's getting people to keep using them. I always know that the trick is to get as many other users to follow as possible…)

Even if you went through the trouble of building a Bluesky account and building a fairly extensive address book, there's no way the service could match the rosy memories of Twitter's heyday. Sure, it's a similar enough experience to curb your craving for the real thing, but it's not compelling enough to make you want more. You post. No one responds. Log off and touch the grass.

Of course, all of this is talking about Bluesky as an early social network. But the company doesn't think that way. Chief Executive Officer Jay Graeber gave several interviews to commemorate the grand opening.she came talk to wired:

We weren't using invites to try to be exclusive. We were using them to manage our growth while building rails, the essential foundation of this new kind of decentralized network.

We needed to build an app protocol, an AT protocol, under Bluesky that allows different developers, companies, and people to come in and change the experience. Some of them will be rolled out soon.

When it's finished, Bluesky's vision is for it to sit somewhere between a full Twitter replacement and a fully decentralized service like Mastodon, the second of the big three social networks after Twitter. . Like Mastodon, the technology behind Bluesky should eventually make that possible. But unlike Mastodon, Bluesky has been less keen to highlight its technical differences with Twitter, as the majority of its users will continue to use its official apps and services for the time being.

And then there's the thread. Meta's Twitter clone is arguably the largest of the three in terms of user numbers alone, but it has made little ripple in broader culture. The site's policy of suppressing political content (according to Threads' platform safety policy, there is no algorithmic promotion) does not solve the problem. There are parallels here with early online culture. Twitter dominates the discussion despite being a fraction of Facebook's size, and so does TikTok despite YouTube having a much larger user base.

Elizabeth Lopat explained the disconnect with The Verge. very accurate classification method I can't do anything but quote her at length.

The silent majority of successful text-based social media sites are lurkers. They are sane, normal people living sane, normal lives… Influencers are building businesses. They are creating #content … The commenter is trying to have a conversation with another human being. They want to be able to have meaningful interactions online, even if they are misplaced. Replyers can be considered the most important subclass of commenters. They are specific. They usually interact with or act on behalf of their favorite Internet users. Finally, prepare your poster (also known as a poster). Posters are necessary for all social networks to function.

The problem that all Twitter alternatives face is that there is an imbalance. Threads is huge, but its user base is hidden and influential. Like Marvel movie audiences, they may consume professionally produced content, but they never form lasting memories. For the past year, Bluesky has been a pure poster child, locked in rooms with each other and unable to get much of the dopamine needed to maintain his frenetic energy. Mastodon is a community of commenters and responders, and while it's possible to have fun chatting, it's decentralized to the point that it's hard to discern conversations that originate from within.

So opening up Bluesky could be the first step toward restoring some of that balance. Posters cannot survive on posters alone. They, and we, need lurkers. Would you like to join us, we have to touch the grass.

Wider Techscape