Category Archives: Bluesky

Bluesky Is Testing A Trending Topics Feature

Bluesky, Social Media

Social network Bluesky said on Christmas that it is testing a trending topics view. The trending topics are visible both on the desktop and mobile apps of the social media network for users across the word, TechCrunch reported.

On the desktop, you can see trending topic on the right sidebar, and on the mobile app, you can tap on the search button to look at them.

Bluesky said trending topics are currently available only in English. Users can disable trending topics by going to Settings > Content and Media and then unchecking the “Enable trending topics” option. Bluesky is making sure content you don’t want to see will not be visible in the trending topics — muted words are carried over, so any words or phrases on your muted list won’t appear in trending topics.

The Verge reported: As a special holiday treat, on December 25th, the social media app Bluesky announced that it has added a new feature to its mobile app: a list of Trending topics that lets you know what subjects are popular among its users.

 The new feature can be found by selecting the search icon (the magnifying glass), which appear at the bottom of the screen on the mobile app and on the left sidebar on the web. Lists of Trending and Recommended subjects now appear below the search bar. Tap on any topic, and you will be able to access the associated posts.

According to the announcement, the new feature is “V1” (it is marked as a Beta on the app) and “we will be iterating with your feedback.” So if you have any objections to Trends appearing under your Bluesky search bar, let them know.

Engadget reported: Social media platform Bluesky has launched Trending Topics into beta, the company announced in a post on its platform. The new feature is one of the most-requested by users and matches a function that has been on rival Threads for around nine months.

The Trending section show the top viral content on the platform, with topics like “Christmas,” “Nosferatu” and “Wikipedia” are currently on top. It can be found by clicking on search in both the desktop and mobile apps, or you can disable it altogether in the settings, Any words that you have muted won’t appear in Trending topics either.

Bluesky recently hit a big milestone with 25 million users, many of whom recently fled X following the US elections. Though still relatively small compared to Threads and X, users have remarked on the high levels of engagement along with the lack of bots and harassment compared to Elon Musk’s platform. 

In my opinion, it looks like Bluesky is testing out what its users want to see – or not to see – on their platform. 

Bluesky Has 20M+ Users After Hitting 15M On November 13

Bluesky, Social Media

Bluesky, the social media network and X competitor has been benefiting from a surge of departures from the Elon-Musk-owned app formerly known as Twitter, TechCrunch reported.

Today, Bluesky has hit a major milestone: it’s topped 20 million users. What’s more, new data indicates the app’s rapid growth is seeing it close the gap with another prominent X rival, Instagram Threads, across metrics like daily active users and website visits.

Bluesky’s user base is still much smaller than Threads, which recently reported north of 275 million monthly active users. However, if Bluesky’s current rate of growth holds up, I could catch up with Threads in time, market intelligence form Similarweb believes.

The Musk-owned app X remains dominant, though, with a U.S. daily active user count that’s more than 10 times larger than Bluesky at present.

The firm’s data also indicates that Bluesky overtook Threads in daily website visits in both the U.S. and the U.K., which signals strong interest from potential new users. Globally, daily website visits on Bluesky haven’t yet surpassed Threads, but its come very close as of mid-November.

Engadget reported Bluesky has passed the 20 million user mark as the app continues its recent surge in growth. The decentralized service, which reached 15 million users less than a week ago, has just about tripled its user base in the last three months.

Though it’s still smaller than its rivals on Threads and X, Bluesky’s current momentum is notable. The app has had several days over the last week where it added a million new users in a single 24-hour period.

That’s similar to the growth rate of Threads, which has been getting a million new sign-up a day for “going on three months,” according to an update last week from Meta’s Adam Mosseri. Threads reached 275 million monthly users this month and has added at least 15 million since the start of November.

And while Bluesky remains the underdog, there are other signs it’s gaining momentum. Bluesky has been the top app in Apple’s App Store for the last six days and has been the top non-gaming app in Google Play for four days, according to data provide by the analytics firm App Figure. Meta’s Threads is currently in the number two spot on the App Store.

The Hollywood Reporter posted: “#Xodus: Bluesky Hits 20M Users as People Continue to Flee X”

A trickle is becoming a flood for Bluesky, the social media company that has seen spectacular growth since the presidential election. On Tuesday, the microblogging platform hit 20 million users, after averaging 1 million new users per day over he past five days.

Bluesky has been one of the main beneficiaries of millions of users leaving Elon Musk’s X, as the site formerly known as Twitter descends into a mess of bots, extreme content, crypto scams, ads, pornography, racism, transphobia and misinformation.

In my opinion, a large number of people are moving to Bluesky and leaving Elon Musk’s X. This could be a really good thing for Bluesky.

Bluesky Says It Has “No Intention” Of Taking User Content To Train AI Tools

Bluesky

Social network Bluesky, in a post on Friday, says that it has “no intention” of taking user content to train generative AI tools. It made the statement the same day X’s new terms of service that spell out how it can analyze user text and other information to train its generative AI tools go into effect, The Verge reported.

“A number of artists and creators have made their home on Bluesky, and we hear their concerns with other platforms training on their data,” Bluesky says in a post. “We do not use any of your content to train generative AI, and have no intention of doing so.

Other companies could still potentially scrape your Bluesky posts for training. Bluesky’s robots.txt doesn’t exclude crawlers from Google, OpenAI, or others, meaning those companies may crawl Bluesky data. 

“Bluesky is an open and public social network, much like website on the Internet itself,” spokesperson Emily Liu tells The Verge. “Just as robots.txt files don’t always prevent outside companies from crawling those sites, the same applies here. That said, we’d like to do our part to ensure that outside orgs respect user consent and are actively discussing within the team on how to achieve this.”

TechCrunch reported Bluesky, a social network that’s experiencing a surge in users this week as users abandon X, says it has “no intention” of using user consent to train AI generative tools. The social network made the announcement on the same day that X, (formerly Twitter) is implementing its new terms of service that allow the platform to use public posts to train AI.

“A number of artists and creators have made their home on Bluesky, and we here their concerns with other platforms training on their data,” Bluesky said in a post on its app. “We do not use any of your content to train generative AI, and have no intention of doing so.”

The company went on to note that it uses AI internally to help with moderation and that it also uses the technology in its “Discover”algorithmic feed. However, Bluesky says “none of these are Gen AI systems trained on user content.”

Bluesky has seen an increase in users following the U.S. presidential election as X gains more of a right-wing approach, especially after Musk used the platform to campaign for President-elect Donald Trump.

Engadget reported Bluesky, which has surged in the days following the US election, said on Friday that it won’t train on its user’s posts for generative AI. 

The declaration stands in stark contrast to the AI training policies of X (Twitter) and Meta’s Threads. Probably not coincidentally, Bluesky’s announcement came the same day X’s new terms of service, allowing third-party partners to train on user posts, went into effect.

Although Bluesky is still he underdog in a race on X and Threads, the platform has picked up steam after the U.S. election. It passed the 15 million user threshold on Wednesday after adding more than a million in the past week.

In my opinion, Bluesky is doing the right thing by encouraging users to ditch X  (formerly Twitter) and make an account on Bluesky.

People Are Flocking To Bluesky As X Makes More Unwanted Changes

Bluesky, ,

A handful of changes coming to X may be pushing users to its competitor. Bluesky, the decentralized social media platform, says it added 500,000 new users in a day this week. The new wave of signups could be related to several controversial changes on X in the last few days, The Verge reported.

This week, X users got a pop-up message notifying them that their posts will be visible even to users they’ve previously blocked. Those accounts still won’t be able to interact with their posts, but it’s a substantial change to how the block feature works that could open up users to harassment.

“Today, block can be used by users to share and hide harmful or private information about those they’ve blocked,” an official X account posted. “Users will be able to see if such behavior occurs with this update, allowing for greater transparency.”

It goes without saying that blocking is a safety issue, particularly for users facing harassment on a platform or people wanting to create distance between themselves and someone else in their life. But Elon Musk has expressed his distain for blocking, and this change to blocking was teased last month. After users got an explicit notification about it this week, Bluesky wasted no time in using it as a recruitment tool.

Mashable reported: We warned you that this change was coming – but X has just made it official: Blocking on Elon Musk’s social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, will no longer actually block users from viewing content — and now users appear to be fleeing X once again.

Essentially, a block on X will now just mean that a blocked user can’t interact with your posts. They can still see them, though, which was not the case before this change. The change to the block function was met with largely negative reactions, with even Musk supporters pointing out the user safety concerns that come with this shift.

And it appears that the change in the block function was enough for some users to flee to a new social media platform. X alternative Bluesky announced Thursday that it had gained half a million new users in the 24 hours since X made the formal announcement about the change. 

TechCrunch reported: Social networking startup Bluesky, which just reported a gain of half a million users over the past day, has now soared to the top five apps on the U.S. App Store and has become the No.2 app in the Social Networking category, up from No. 181 a week ago, according to data from app intelligence firm Appfigures.

In addition, the growth is not limited to the U.S. market, either. A number of countries are showing four-digit growth in downloads, compared to last Wednesday, leading Bluesky to enter the top 10 in countries like Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan, where it’s No. 1; Hong Kong, where it’s No.2; Canada and South Korea, where it’s No. 4; and Singapore, where it’s No. 8.

On X, users are understandably upset over the company’s decision to change how the block function operates. Soon, users with public accounts can have their X posts viewed by anyone, including those they blocked, unlike before. 

In my opinion, Bluesky is currently gaining a whole lot of people who don’t want to put up with X’s shenanigans anymore. This could – potentially – encourage those who are tired with Elon Musk’s X to stop using it.

Jack Dorsey Departs Bluesky Board

Bluesky,

Bluesky’s most prominent backer has left its board. On Saturday, Jack Dorsey posted on X about grants for open protocols from his philanthropic Start Small initiative.

This prompted someone to ask Dorsey if he was still on the Bluesky board, and he responded with a terse “no.” Dorsey did not answer any of the follow-up posts asking hime to explain his departure TechCrunch reported.

It is not clear when Dorsey left the board; as of Sunday morning, Bluesky’s corporate FAQ still identified him as a board member. Later that afternoon, the company published the following statement:

“We sincerely thank Jack for his help funding and initiating that Bluesky project. Bluesky is thriving as an open source social network running on atproto, the decentralized protocol we have built.

With Jack’s departure, we are searching for a new board member for the Bluesky public benefit company who shares our commitment to building a social network that puts people in control of their experience. More to come!”

Dorsey first announced Bluesky in 2019, back when he was still CEO of Twitter. He wrote that Twitter (now X) was “funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media.”

The Verge reported that Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is no longer on the board of Bluesky, the decentralized social media platform he helped start.

Neither Bluesky nor Dorsey himself seem to have said how or what he left the board. For now, two board members remain: CEO, Jay Graeber, and Jabber / XMPP inventor Jeremie Miller. Dorsey originally backed Bluesky in 2019 as a project to develop an open-source social media standard that he wanted Twitter to move to. He later joined its board of directors when it split from Twitter in 2022.

But Dorsey hadn’t seemingly been a particularly active participant at the company. In March, when The Verge’s Nilay Patel asked Graeber for Decoder, about his level of involvement with Bluesky, she said she gets “some feedback occasionally,” but implied he’s otherwise “being Jack Dorsey on a cloud,” as Nilay put it. Months after that interview, Dorsey had closed his Bluesky account.

Engadget reported Jack Dorsey has apparently exited the Bluesky board. The former Twitter CEO who was previously Bluesky’s highest-profile proponent shared the life update this weekend on X, where he’s been posting a lot lately.

The decentralized social network started as a project by a team at then-Twitter back in 2019, but it eventually split off on its own. It only opened to the public this March after being invite-only for almost year.

Dorsey has said mixed things about X since Elon Musk’s takeover, but it seems he’s now swung back around. On Saturday, he posted on X “don’t depend on corporations to grant you rights. Defend them yourself using freedom technology (you’re on one).”

In my opinion, Jack Dorsey appears to be someone who puts a lot of himself into a social media site, and then leaves it in favor of the next big thing.

Bluesky Launches Ozone

Bluesky,

Bluesky posted: Today, we’re excited to announce that we’re open-sourcing Ozone, our collaborative moderation tool. With Ozone, individuals and teams can work together and review and label content across the network. Later this week, we’re opening up the ability for you to run your own independent moderation services, seamlessly integrated into the Bluesky app. This means that you’ll be able to create and subscribe to additional moderation services on top of what Bluesky requires, giving you unprecedented control over your social media experience.

At Bluesky, we’re interested in safety from two angles. First, we’ve built our own moderation team dedicated to providing around-the-clock coverage to uphold our community guidelines.

Additionally, we recognize that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to moderation — no single company can get online safety right for every country, culture, and community in the world. So we’ve also been building something bigger — an ecosystem of moderation and open-source safety tools that give communities power to create their own spaces, with their own norms and preferences. Still, Bluesky feels familiar and intuitive. It’s a straightforward app on the surface, but under the hood, we have enabled real innovation and competition in social media by building a new kind of open network.

In designing these moderation services, Bluesky operated by three principles:

Simple and Powerful: Give users a pleasant default experience, with customization options under the hood.

User Choice: Empower users and communities to develop their own moderation systems.

Openness: Create an open system that increases trust in the governance of our digital spaces.

Decentralized Twitter/X rival Bluesky announced on Tuesday that it’s open sourcing Ozone, a tool that lets individuals and teams collaboratively review and label content on the network. The company plans to open up the ability for individuals and teams to run their own independent moderation services later this week, which means users will be able to subscribe to additional moderation services on top of Bluesky’s default moderation, TechCrunch reported.

In a blog post, Bluesky said the change will give users “unprecedented control” over their social media experience. The company’s vision for moderation is a stackable ecosystem of services, which is why it will start allowing users to install filters from independent moderation services on top of what Bluesky already requires. As a result, users will be able to create a customized experience tailored to their preferences.

The Verge reported Bluesky will soon let users customize how its content is moderated in their feeds. The social platform announced that it’s open-sourcing its moderation tool, Ozone, to let developers create additional moderation services that can be selected by users.

As an example, Bluesky says someone could use Ozone to create a moderation services that specifically blocks images of spiders. A user could then subscribe to that service to remove photos of spiders from their feeds. They can also report any spider images that fall through the cracks, allowing the moderation service’s creator to review them.

In my opinion, Bluesky is doing something innovative that other social media sites have ignored. Giving users control over what they want to see — and to suppress things they don’t want to see (such as spiders), will make the platform much more friendly.

Bluesky Announces A New Look – The Social Butterfly

Bluesky,

Bluesky remains an invite-only decentralized Twitter alternative, but now, you don’t have to be logged in to be able to see posts on the platform, according to a blog post from Bluesky CEO Jay Grabber, The Verge reported. You can now see posts from both the web and from the Bluesky App.

According to The Verge, if you want to prevent logged-out users from seeing your posts, you can “discourage” that by clicking a toggle in settings. But Bluesky notes that “other apps may not honor this request” and that the toggle doesn’t make your account private.

Bluesky posted the following in the Bluesky blog:

A New Look for Bluesky: The Social Butterfly (written by Jay Graber)

Today, we announced a new logo for Bluesky.

Why did we choose a butterfly?

Well, of course, it flies. But more importantly, it is a symbol of change and transformation. Early on, we noticed that people were organically using the butterfly emoji ? to indicate their Bluesky handles. We loved it, and adopted it as it spread. The butterfly speaks to our mission of transforming social media into something new.

Like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, we are starting to open up. Posts on Bluesky have been public from the start through the open protocol, but today, we’re making them publicly accessible through the app. We’re unfolding a little bit at a time, and are excited to bring you along on this journey of metamorphosis!

What’s in a name?

The name “Bluesky” was originally a placeholder for the project started by Twitter to build an open source protocol. I decided to keep the name when I was chosen as the lead of the project. It’s memorable and symbolizes the open space of possibilities: The Twitter bird freed from a closed platform to fly in Bluesky’s open ecosystem.

As the project matured, we named the underlying standard the AT Protocol, or atproto. Bluesky, as the more colorful (and less technical) name everyone was familiar with, is also what we named the first app we built on atprotp. But Bluesky is not the limit. Many more apps and experiences are already beginning to emerge – there are thousands of custom feeds, dozens of other clients, and atproto will eventually support other apps. We hope that Bluesky, as the first app, will be a catalyst for change and transform how social media works, like a butterfly flapping its wings…

TechCrunch reported that decentralized social network and Twitter rival Bluesky is finally letting users look at posts on the platform without logging in. People still need an invite to create an account and start posting but can read posts through a link.

This move will also let publishers link to or embed Bluesky posts in blogs. Plus, users can share them in individual group chats.

Personally, I have been enjoying Bluesky. I think the new butterfly emoji/logo is cute and feels like a good fit for the platform.