In the last couple of weeks, and the last few days in particular, there has been a huge amount of buzz around Bluesky. The social media app looks reassuringly like Twitter in “the good old days”. It is the latest beneficiary of the anti-Elon Musk/Donald Trump backlash, with the number of users shooting up.
A lot of the conversation around this development has been about how much “nicer” the platform is. Well, maybe, but that is not why it is relevant to the media. Bluesky is happy to promote links, and news in particular, unlike many of its rivals. (As is often the case, I share the sentiment expressed by The Verge editor Nilay Patel.
We love links because we love the open web
— Jay 🦋 (@jay.bsky.team) November 19, 2024 at 5:00 AM
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Bluesky Beats its Rivals
Mastodon is just fiddly and has never got mainstream take-up. Meta’s Threads made a big impact when it launched, not least because of the heft of the company behind it. I still like the platform in various ways, and use it regularly. It’s fun and has a large and growing number of users. It is though not all that valuable to journalists as has never really captured the zeitgeist. There is STILL no DM functionality on Threads. It proudly suppresses politics and live news. Indeed, it has become something of a meme that people will see content about a major event unfolding on Threads a few days after it happens.
BlueSky, meanwhile looks familiar to anyone who has ever used Twitter. (This isn’t surprising given it was started by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.) It has DMs, a timely timeline and other tools like starter packs which allow you to follow a mass of people in one go. All very useful to journalists.
Not surprisingly, more and more hacks and media organisations are taking to the platform. Bron Maher at Press Gazette has a good write-up of who is there. At this point, it all becomes a bit self-fulfilling – people in the media decide Bluesky is useful to the media, so they use it, and it becomes useful.
Without a doubt, we’re now in a period where if you want to have a social media presence you have to be active on a number of networks. Twitter always had a somewhat underserved high profile anyway. Even though other platforms have far more users, journalists liked it so decided it is important. However, if Bluesky becomes and remains an active place where writers can once again share their work, then it might just have a chance of making a long-term impact.
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