It still doesn't seem to have a public feed though, so you can only view individual posts.

I will say as someone has an invite: you're not missing out on anything. It definitely has far less activity than either Twitter or Threads, but somehow it also just has worse content. You would think they were invite-only to keep the quality high, but everything is either furry porn or hate-filled rage bait, neither of which I am personally a fan of at all. I keep telling trying to tell it as much, but I honestly don't think I've seen one post I truly wanted to see. I tried to do it for like a week hoping it would get better, but honestly it seems like there's just nothing worthwhile on the whole site. Personally, the only way I can see me ever using Bluesky is if they manage to totally invert their userbase. You need to just start over when you somehow get a crowd worse than either version of Twitter, in my opinion.

It's lost the initial momentum but it's not dead yet. I'm still holding my breath that the critical mass makes the leap eventually; "it's just twitter but you can write and use custom clients and feed algorithms" is a compelling proposition

For me and a lot of others, it's the only twitter alternative we ever signed up for. A few never came back to twitter, but most did mostly for social reasons. But twitter as a platform gets worse each day, and if it ever truly breaks or dies, bsky will be the schelling point for a whole bunch of people

I've tried a few twitter alternatives (including Bluesky) as someone who hardly ever uses twitter anyway. I was a little disappointed how it just felt like ... more twitter. I'm browsing around finding mostly memes or outrage that doesn't have context to me. I fairly quickly get exhausted trying to find / curate content.

I guess I should have expected it, but I hoped that somewhere a different network would have a different style or flavor. However, the content patterns that get engagement and etc seem ingrained in the participants no matter where you go.

Personally I can't help but feel both left out, and not wanting to be a part of whatever these style of social media apps are.

Having said that there's a lot of talk about twitter clones missing features, but for me I wonder if the content is the same, why would a significant number of people move anyway?

I got the app but still can’t browse anything without an account. So I don’t use it :| this is user acquisition 101, if you’re behind a login page people won’t use your stuff.

I played a small role in the RSS part of this release, nudging them to go with title-less items in the feed.

If anybody wants a Bluesky invite code, I have a handful available. DM me at @edavis@hachyderm.io or at https://t.me/ejd215. First come, first served!

They totally missed 4-5 events of mass interest in leaving Twitter and now have to scramble for any interest.

Bluesky's big selling point is that it's an open protocol, but it's their own homegrown protocol that nobody else is using. Meanwhile Threads has working ActivityPub[1]. You can see threads posts on Mastodon.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/13/24000120/threads-meta-ac...

It feels like Bluesky missed their chance to be the twitter alternative after how well Threads has been going. I'm sure zuck will find a way to ruin it but its gonna be a long road a head for Bluesky.

I follow like 30 accounts on Twitter and it’s a perfectly enclosed little bubble, I really only see what I want.

But whenever I try Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads as a brand new account without anyone to follow it’s just same US politics shit. Trump, Trump bad, nazis, AOC, Trump, gender, trans rights, nazis, republicans, Trump, gender etc. This is what I see right now on Bluesky What’s Hot, this is what I see right now on Mastodon Explore.

The fact that even Mastodon pushing the rage bait (“ These are posts from across the social web that are gaining traction today”) which is supposed to be the ‘healthy’ and ‘better’ social media site shows how deep problems we have.

If really that’s what an average Joe and Jane sees when they just want to try out these services then no one wonder the world is going worse by each passing day.

Just dug up my old invite code to find this is pretty bad. Basically an app for the small obscure minority who left Twitter in protest including a bunch of ex users you'd only know from memes. Curious to see what this evolves into.

Why is it taking Bluesky so long to launch basic features and allow more traffic? Are there some complexities related to using an open protocol?

Seeing lots of comparisons to Mastodon, Threads, and XTwitter in this thread.

I remember in the days of instant messaging, I had a single client (Adium for Mac OS X) which could talk to AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Chat, etc. It gave me a unified buddy list, and a unified interface for messaging any of my friends, regardless of the underlying instant messaging provider.

Is anyone working on a similar omniclient for Mastodon/Threads/Bluesky/XTwitter?

If we get to the point where most users are using omniclients of this kind, that helps reduce network effects and lock-in. Seems like the Mastodon/Threads/Bluesky teams would have a strong incentive to collaborate on such a client, in order to reduce XTwitter network effects, essentially joining forces in their own unified network. (I imagine that XTwitter will block API access, at least in the short term.)

That took way too long, but I already consider Bluesky dead, they had the chance but the stupid "invite-only" system killed it (in my opinion) and then when invites actually started getting sent out I just didn't bother anymore and went back to Twitter

Still hoping for an official “Tweetdeck-ish” interface choice on the desktop. In the absence thereof, deck.blue isn’t too bad while skyfeed.app, although it seems more technically robust, isn’t exactly eye candy. I know there are others I haven’t yet tried; just would love to see Bluesky itself have something like Mastodon’s “Advanced Web Interface” option.

RSS feeds of user accounts was another addition. They're a bit average though in that they don't have media (i.e., images) in the feed. I'll keep using https://bluestream.deno.dev/ for now.

I have not paid much attention to Bsky and I doubt I will but from a quick glance it looks nearly identical to X.

Is it basically an X clone that will be an alternative Twitter/X?

Or is there a lot more magic going on? Why are people excited?

(Mind you I dont spend much time on X either, so this is purely from looking at the two and comparing. )

I got an invite for Bluesky from a kind person on HN, but as someone who didn’t use Twitter, I didn’t have a sense of whom to follow. I discovered some nice artists and comics. Any suggestions on people who post nice stuff or comics or fun stuff would be welcome (I really don’t want to deal with political discussions or arguments that are meant to trigger outrage on a regular basis).

Meanwhile, here are some invite codes (I’ll update this list if they’re used within HN’s edit window):

bsky-social-xueut-35ahm

bsky-social-25tsd-crmqc

~~~bsky-social-xxxxx-xxxxx~~~ (used)

~~~bsky-social-xxxxx-xxxxx~~~ (used)

Edit: This is my first time handing out invites. I don’t like how the invite system shows me which account on Bluesky was created using my invite code. I’d rather this be hidden from the person sending the invite or at least provide an option to the person signing up if they want their account to be disclosed to the person who invited them. In real life there are usually personal or professional connections with such events, but online these could be (and are) totally random strangers.

No followers, not following anyone, yet somehow this showed up on my feed: https://bsky.app/profile/minedoo.bsky.social

Yup. Bluesky is trash.

Brosky sold twitter and before he sold it it went from the best to the worst social media, why on earth would I go back there? Elon might be cringe but Twitter is legitimately less neurotic nowadays than it was before he sold it.

I just want an invite. I don't know why they are being so snobbish about it

Literally so crazy I can't just get an invite, it's so stupid

I think this is too little, too late. Threads is already filling in the void left by Twitter and has the advantage of the Instagram user base behind it.

This reminds me of Diaspora.. am I that old?

Don't know if I'm the only one but from a branding perspective Bluesky seems a very bland name.

If anyone from Twitter I know is reading this and wants an invite code ask me via Mastodon DM or email.

It took so long to get an invite code I unfortunately lost my interest.

I love it, but there are not DMs, which is a showstopper.

Bluesky’s ability to federate was touted, but doesn’t meaningfully exist (otherwise I’d be running a node).

It’s still got centralized censorship, same as Twitter or Facebook.

How does Bluesky compare to Mastodon?

Wow!

Im amazed at how fast and pretty Bluesky is compared to other web applications, especially Twitter's.

What's Bluesky? This just looks like a Twitter clone?

Good precedent, more please.

This is not a virtue. They have not yet reached enshittification point.

It is not a dominant player that wants to protect its contents.

They have nothing to protect.

Too late, IMO. The invite-only system meant that the "leave Twitter" crowd split between Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon. IMO none of them have ended up being great replacements.

Since the Threads launch, I barely used BlueSky anymore. Now with the new logo, I opened again for the first time in 4 months or so, thinking that well, there was improvements? No.

You still can't send videos and gifs. That's just, so basic for a social network.

Let alone all the other missing things, and how awful the apps are. They are basically the worst example to show React Native. The app here on Android takes 15 seconds to open (an improvement, it took 30 seconds before). It's sluggy, no animations, etc. Feels like Alpha.

They've been far too slow to respond to Twitter/X's missteps to be able to take advantage. Threads won that race by a wide margin, even if it is still relatively lacking in features.

If nothing else, there is one good thing of Elon's acquisition of Twitter, and it's that it has made the case for making social media outlets responsible for their content evidently clear.

For better or worse, when management changed, the narratives and atmosphere in Twitter changed. Its content changed. This would be absurd if social media communities were organic or independent in how they spread ideas, but they are very much not. Either before or after the acquisition (I have no dog in this race, really) the platform controlled its content, and as such it ought to be responsible for it. If Twitter decides which among the millions of messages it decides to publish they are as responsible for that as I am when I choose which among the combinations of characters I output from my keyboard.

Any corporation that pretends they are only doing the proper thing by controlling speech within its platform should be called out for what they are doing: media manipulation.

BlueSky is the only place where I have ever received death threats, the only place where I ended in multiple blocklists for upsetting god knows whom, and the only place where I had to block hundreds of accounts to avoid getting porn and questionable furry stuff in the main timeline, even with moderation on.

But it seems to work fine for a particular brand of extremely online people.

After reading this post, I can't see the new Bluesky logo any other way:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460013

Tried to sign up for bs. With valid invitation code. Got an error message after the final stage. Again and again and again.

Social Media Companies that can't get their sign-up funnel in order have already failed.

Until I see what Bluesky's AT protocol federation looks like in practice, I'm not interested.

Without federation it's basically Twitter with less users. And even after federation it might be Mastodon/ActivityPub with less users.

Very disappointed in the direction they took to launch. Exclusive beta, no focus on decentralization despite that being the major selling point.

>JavaScript Required This is a heavily interactive web application, and JavaScript is required. Simple HTML interfaces are possible, but that is not what this is.

Not for me I guess. When there's a nitter for bluesky (nuesky?) maybe I'll check that out.

It looks like at least some of the text from the post is still visible maybe

> ( 1.60 is rolling out now (2/5) Posts, profiles, and user search are now available without login! You can finally share your quality posts with the group chat or in articles. If you don’t want the Bluesky app to show your posts to logged-out users, opt out in the Moderation tab. 2023-12-22T18:59:01.633Z)

It's ironic that a service called "Bluesky", a word that Merriam-Webster defines as meaning "characterized by unconstrained optimism or imagination", looks so boring and Twitter-like.

[dead]

They should have done this long ago, they missed the boat

It's basically Twitter.

Does it have j/k navigation yet?

Is Bluesky and Threads basically Twitter with different moderation policies? I can see why someone might leave Twitter for Mastodon but why would you leave for one of those 2? Just block people you don't want to see stuff from.

Personally I have been pleasantly surprised by how useful Grok is for getting a quick read on events around the world captured in tweets, e.g. protests in Argentina or the shooting in Prague. The spotty coverage of global news by US media leaves a huge opportunity for X to exploit.