Next Stop: Social Media
Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about the friend we all hang out with but don't mention in conversations.
I’ll be honest. I’ve got a bit of a love/hate with social media. I’ve seen some of the best parts of social media and I’ve seen (and experienced) some of the worst.
I stay away from most platforms because they annoy me in a variety of ways, but Twitter has always had a soft spot.
I’ve enjoyed being on it, building on it, and that comes down to not the platform, but the people. I’ve met some incredible people on there. But I’ve been distracted by a new player in town, Bluesky. I had quite a bit of FOMO when I first started seeing people talk about it (where else, on Twitter!). But I finally scored an invite a little over a week ago, and I’ve been hanging out on there ever since. I still spend a bunch of time on Twitter, but now that time is being split with time on Bluesky.
After a week on the platform, I’m going to call it now: Bluesky will be the main player that ends up dethroning Twitter, if not for the world, at least for me.
I’ve tried a number of Twitter clones and none of them were quite what I was looking for.
Mastodon just never caught my attention really. I poked at it a little, but it felt clunky.
Nostr didn’t have a great experience. I signed up and started playing with it and then kinda forgot about it. Haven’t been back since day 1.
Bluesky though. There’s something about it and the community that’s currently on it. I wouldn’t say I’m tightly integrated in that community though. I don’t get much engagement on my posts and most of the people I talk to regularly aren’t on there.
But I see where the platform is going. The development team is present, responsive, and I love their vision.
The federated/decentralized nature of it means I don’t need to worry about how that group ends up though. I’ll be able to build relationships, start up my own server, and manage everything I need to.
That’s extremely appealing.
Then there’s the idea of customizable algorithms. I’ll be able to have full algorithmic choice about what I see on there. It’s something I’ve tried to create on Twitter in a few different ways, but because I had all sorts of limits on my API access, I couldn’t do everything I wanted. Now though, I’m not limited by anything like that.
It’s game on.
Finally, there’s an excitement around the platform that is palpable. Momentum matters, a lot. And there are now a few big players on Bluesky among the 50K or so currently there.
Current State of Bluesky
Right now, it’s invite only. Most users earn 1 invite for every 2 weeks on the platform. Some other users occasionally get gifted a bunch of invites too. But that’s not me. I’m still waiting to earn my first invite.
BUT….
If anyone’s interested, I might stand up my own server that people can use to play around with it and see what they think. It’s not fully federated yet, so you won’t be able to interact with other people currently on the platform, but it’s a good way to learn how things work, if you feel like building against a server, you could do that, etc.
Let me know if that’s something you’d like me to pursue!
New Channel
In a little bit of other news, I’ve decided to launch a new Youtube channel, Listen To Leo. I’ll be posting all sorts of content, from reviews of new tools I discover, some “build with me” videos where I explore different libraries and technologies, and whatever else happens to come up. I’m trying to have as much fun with it as possible while growing an audience.
Next up, we’ll take a deep dive into the business models of social media. That’s going to start next week!