Lot of negative comments here but IMO this is huge. The best way to keep anything commercial good in the long term is competition, and the only way to have competition with web services is if users can go somewhere else, which requires a portable identity/username and open protocols. Bluesky is currently the only platform offering both in a convenient package. Even Mastodon doesn't make it this easy[0].
Purchase and manage domains directly through Bluesky
111–120 of 354 posts
Re: Purchase and manage domains directly through Bluesky
#112Have you all considered that the VC-backed winner-take-all model of one platform left standing does not have to be the way? Threads for the status-seekers Spill for hip folks Truth Social for alt-right Bluesky for the cozy web Mastodon for the true geeks So on and so on...and that's a good thing.
It is fine, there's a huge diversity in social media right now. I don't think Bluesky has a good narrative for any particular kind of user. I don't think it's going to hit cozy web status being an open air massively global network. The hallmark of the cozy web is a mix of private/semi-open/actually niche communities.
Re: Purchase and manage domains directly through Bluesky
#113I don't get the argument that scaling is harder for startups than for Big Tech. 1. At Meta, you had to use internal "approved" tooling to build you product. which is far worse than products in open market. BlueSky can put it all on serverless like AWS Lambda and call it a day. 2. If funds are an issue, then raise more. There's no way around it. you had to scale sometime. Even if you optimise well, you'll still burn a…
Meta has a $750 billion market cap and just slapped Threads on top of the Instagram database. How do you achieve the same with a startup and AWS Lambda?
Re: Purchase and manage domains directly through Bluesky
#114When are we going to be able to USE BlueSky..? Looks like Meta has beaten Jack to the Punch and released their Twitter replacement... Who's to say anyone will wanna use BSky once people are integrated into Threads
Re: Purchase and manage domains directly through Bluesky
#115Unnecessary, pointless, expensive features are precisely how you define the inverse of the original Twitter vision. Bare minimum but fast message passing as a social communication layer. If all of these new platforms are trying to become a better or more bloated version of what Twitter has become , then they will never catch on like the viral tool that Twitter originally was. None of them learned the lesson of google…
Engineers and designers and PMs are so smart and experienced and so eager to show each other how good at their job they are.
Thorough, complex, expansive feature sets are where those skillsets can shine; no glory in building something simple, to the point, and limited in scope.
Most products suck because people just cannot help themselves. It takes insane focus and control to override those tendencies when hundreds or thousands of people are working on a product (miss you Steve).
Re: Purchase and manage domains directly through Bluesky
#116I must say, the number of people in here saying bluesky is dead because of Threads' overnight growth is surprising and upsetting. Believing all that matters is how fast they get users is hugely missing the point. Bluesky has been taking their time in order to get things right--and getting certain things right is very important. Twitter already exists; we need alternatives because things were handled wrong.
For example, Bluesky right now is ironing out a fairly novel moderation system. They are doing this not only transparently, but with the input and active involvement of the users. This takes time and it is also wise to complete moderation systems before opening the app up to everyone. Ineffective (or nonexistent?!) moderation systems are one of the biggest issues people have with many/most platforms including Twitter, and it is more important that they get it right than they get a zillion users overnight.
Crowning whichever one can "move faster and break things" as the winner is the wrong approach, and demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding about the problems plaguing Twitter and other platforms.
Honestly, Threads and Bluesky are barely comparable given how different they are philosophically and on a lot of very fundamental levels.
Re: Purchase and manage domains directly through Bluesky
#117I don't get the argument that scaling is harder for startups than for Big Tech. 1. At Meta, you had to use internal "approved" tooling to build you product. which is far worse than products in open market. BlueSky can put it all on serverless like AWS Lambda and call it a day. 2. If funds are an issue, then raise more. There's no way around it. you had to scale sometime. Even if you optimise well, you'll still burn a…
> BlueSky can put it all on serverless like AWS Lambda and call it a day.
> If funds are an issue, then raise more.
This is exactly the cancer that’s eating most modern services. Burn money, raise money, burn money, have investors holding you by the balls demanding profitability over a massively expensive inefficient system, shove ads everywhere, degrade experience. Add more haphazard money-pit feature to drive value. Burn more money. Rinse and repeat.
> A simple MVP shouldn't have a massive team behind it anyways
This is true, but not for a social media app that’s expecting (or wanting) hundreds of millions of free non-paying users. Opening the floodgates, then optimizing after the fact worked in the 2000s, but it doesn’t work today. It’s a good way to repeat and be stuck in the cycle above.
Re: Purchase and manage domains directly through Bluesky
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well Threads currently doesn’t even have a chronological, non-algo feed I can look at, whereas on bluesky you can have any number of feeds with whatever algo/logic you want. I don’t think I’ll be using Threads much while the one and only feed is the way it is. And there’s more differences than just that, it’s a bit too soon to do a declaration of death I think
> Well Threads currently doesn’t even have a chronological, non-algo feed I can look at, whereas on bluesky you can have any number of feeds with whatever algo/logic you want. None of that matters if the people you follow are on Threads but aren’t on Bluesky. And if the people you follow can’t get on Bluesky even if they wanted to, then off to Threads they will go and so everybody else will follow.
But there's a key difference: If your friends aren't on Bluesky yet, it's quite possibly because they haven't gotten an invite code yet. Plenty of people are very interested and waiting to join. I've been inviting friends as I've received codes. It is an entirely different dynamic than just an unpopular social network, and it is perceived very differently (and not at all negatively).
Re: Purchase and manage domains directly through Bluesky
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
How was it vaporware? It existed, it worked. In fact it worked great. I used app.net for years. I wouldn't be nostalgic about vaporware.
What was great about it? Its model made no sense tbh. Pay $50/year for an API key to a twitter like platform that nobody is using. Anybody can create an app, but you have to pay them separately. The branding made no sense, “app.net” a microblogging platform? It felt like the only people who ever signed up to app.net were ex-third party twitter developers who felt burned by twitter’s 2012 changes. Their development tr…
> What was great about it?
Technically, app.net was a full-fledged Twitter clone, with twice the character limit of Twitter at the time. It was every bit as good as Twitter. As a centralized service, it didn't have the annoying, confusing friction of federated Mastodon, and it wasn't nearly as primitive as Bluesky, which is still very bare bones.
The best part was the community. Almost all of the toxicity of Twitter was absent. And no spam, no bots, or other crap like that.
> Pay $50/year for an API key
You weren't paying for an API key. You had a username and password like Twitter or any other social network. There was a full web interface, as well as native apps, just like Twitter.
And it had RSS feeds, which Twitter had just abolished in 2012.
> The branding made no sense, “app.net” a microblogging platform?
Sure, that was a bit weird. They pivoted to a social network from a previous venture.
> It felt like the only people who ever signed up to app.net were ex-third party twitter developers who felt burned by twitter’s 2012 changes.
Not true. Replace "developers" with "users".
Initially, there were a lot of signups for app.net. The problem was that people didn't quit Twitter. I personally quit Twitter and deleted my account, but most other people didn't fully commit to app.net and kept their Twitter accounts, so they found themselves splitting their time, which isn't a great experience, and a lot of their personal network was still only on Twitter. In the end, Twitter's network effect defeated app.net.
If people only knew in 2012 what Twitter would become in 2022...
Re: Purchase and manage domains directly through Bluesky
#120Unnecessary, pointless, expensive features are precisely how you define the inverse of the original Twitter vision. Bare minimum but fast message passing as a social communication layer. If all of these new platforms are trying to become a better or more bloated version of what Twitter has become , then they will never catch on like the viral tool that Twitter originally was. None of them learned the lesson of google…
Engineers and designers and PMs are so smart and experienced and so eager to show each other how good at their job they are. Thorough, complex, expansive feature sets are where those skillsets can shine; no glory in building something simple, to the point, and limited in scope. Most products suck because people just cannot help themselves. It takes insane focus and control to override those tendencies when hundreds o…
> limited in scope.
These three words evoke PTSD in me as hearing it means promotion is no-go again.