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Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app

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Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app

#171

Post by [deleted] »

speak_plainly wrote: post #7
toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does success look like? I get what I want from Twitter/X through a pull through cache. I get to read the folks I follow on Bluesky. Works for me? My feed as a utility is working as expected. I keep what I want to read, and mute and block that which I do not. I remain in control of my data and experience of the firehose. If someone I'd like to see on Bluesky is not yet there, I ask them to be. If there is data on…

I think there are two things going on. After launch, there was an exuberant group of users who believed the purpose or aim of Bluesky was to be a recreation of Twitter in terms of user base and impact. They were lead on by the icon a bit and lots of rhetoric. And I think many believed it would destroy X. By their standards, Bluesky is an epic failure. But by the aims of the company itself, moving social media from pr…

[deleted]

Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app

#172

Post by pessimizer »

afavour wrote: post #155
pessimizer wrote: post #150

Bluesky's active user base has never not been shrinking, no matter what they were focusing on. https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats The surest thing in tech for the past couple of years is that bluesky has fewer users than it did last month. It's entire life is due to lib slactivism. It started under the conceit of being a p2p public service, took VC, and its founder bailed and badmouthed it. It's entire existence is ideolog…

> It's entire life is due to lib slactivism I'd disagree with that, I'd say its entire life is due to the shittifying of Twitter. People, like myself, sought to recreate the experience of what Twitter used to be like and (after trying and not being satisfied with Mastodon) it's the next best thing. The problem is that a social network of this kind relies on having a large enough population to feel "live" and Bluesky…

I agree (in a way), but I don't think that people who went to Bluesky were trying to recreate twitter, they were trying to silence twitter. The past they are pining for was a past when people they didn't like weren't allowed to speak, and they were hoping (in a non-userlike, political way) that bluesky would threaten twitter, and force it to behave in the way that they preferred or to shut down. Then they would all be able to go back to the ideologically-pruned twitter of their dreams, or twitter would go bankrupt (the bankruptcy narratives were endless) and everyone would move to bluesky.

They were hoping that twitter would go the way of Digg. It's very similar to the fantasy that they had about Reddit after the API shutdown. Slacktivism.

The fact that twitter is as active as ever is why they slink back. I'd bet 90% of actives on bluesky also have twitter accounts that are more active. Twitter didn't care when they walked away; in fact it was a relief. A great many of them were extreme trolls and reply guys who spent the rest of their time mass-reporting people for disagreeing with them.

And for the few people who thought of this as the p2p answer to twitter (an obsession among programming p2p nerds - including me - for a long time) it has to be a disappointment that the company obviously has no intention of relinquishing control of a thing.

Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app

#173

Post by adastra22 »

dewey wrote: post #149
Sindisil wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A website being used in a web browser seems to you like an edge case?! Really? If that's really a common view, we really did lose the plot.

For a social media site on mobile, yes.

I have zero social media apps installed. Nobody in my family has social media apps. We are not the majority, but we do exist…

Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app

#174

Post by adastra22 »

VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #72
omoikane wrote: post #15

Maybe Bluesky is not quite the Twitter rival it set out to be, but it's got a better shot than Mastodon, according to the user count graphs here: https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://mastodon-analytics.com/ Bluesky has a higher total user count. I think the number of active users might be higher too, but I am not sure what's mastodon's definition of an active user for the second link above. Anecdotally, Bluesky feels…

Disagree heavily. I find Mastodon/the fediverse has far better engagement and longevity due to being open source and decentralized. Bluesky is an island on its own, just trying to be a Twitter copy and nothing more.

Ever since Twitter lost the plot, that’s a good thing. I wish we had 20010-era Twitter back.

Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app

#175

Post by adastra22 »

eterm wrote: post #66
delecti wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was this? Other than posts from official the Bluesky account (bsky.app) my feed is roughly 0% about Bluesky itself. There was more discussion about Bluesky itself early on, when the contrast with Twitter was more topical. And I actually wouldn't mind seeing more discussion about atproto. I'm mildly curious about whether anyone is doing anything with it.

Perhaps it's the crowd I've followed and I've fallen down a niche, but I keep getting pushed threads such as this: https://bsky.app/profile/palle.eurosky.social/post/3msirglff... And a whole bunch of other stuff about whether people should even be on bluesky, or should be instead on other federations, and it all just feels so meaningless to me. It's as if someone has invented a few different ways to print, and there'…

The “for you” algorithm is your problem. Don’t use it.

Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app

#176

Post by rglullis »

dewey wrote: post #167
rglullis wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow. Do you think that someone using the Twitter app is more or less tracked than someone using their mobile web browser?

More, as you have the advertising identifiers from Apple / Google on mobile and you are also not able to block tracking scripts / tracking ads like on mobile web (At least not without more effort or installing additional software or a vpn).

Then we are in agreement: native apps are only made to the benefit of the companies, not the users.

Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app

#177

Post by 6031769 »

inanothertime wrote: post #154

> Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app Are they implying a causal relationship between their shrinking user base and their focus expansion? The article doesn't give any proof whatsoever.

No they aren't. All they are doing is pointing out a temporal correlation. Inference of causality is left to the whim of the reader.

Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app

#178

Post by cpburns2009 »

echelon wrote: post #38
raincole wrote: post #28

Bluesky's feed algorithm (the "Discover" tab) is the worst I've ever seen. Hands down. I can't imagine anyone enjoying it unless they're 1) super into the US politics/domestic issues AND 2) politically aligned with the main user base of Bluesky. The funniest part is that there is a better algorithm. It's right here: https://bsky.app/profile/spacecowboy17.bsky.social/feed/for-... But somehow the devs of Bluesky never…

I don't want to see politics, rage bait, sexism, hate, performative superiority, whining, or negativity. Who invented all of these algorithms? I want none of this. I want good news, awesome things, uplifting stories, cool hacks. That's it. That's literally it.

> I want good news, awesome things, uplifting stories, cool hacks. That's it. That's literally it.

This is my actual experience on X. Find interesting people to follow. The "muted words" feature is great for filtering out political noise.

Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app

#179

Post by Godsend69 »

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #116
hamburglar wrote: post #99

I notice that the stat the article repeatedly quotes is MAU for usage of the mobile app, but one of the things I love about Bluesky is that you don’t need to use a mobile app to have a good UX. I use the mobile browser to access it, so I’m not in that MAU number. Perhaps bsky has a larger number of active users that don’t use the app?

Same. With the exception of Reddit (which I use a different client for anyway), I tend to just use the sites themselves. Part of it is just not wanting those apps to invade the rest of my life. I know I can turn off notifications and things, but for some weird reason it helps me stay a bit more detached from social media when I'm forced to rely on the site. The other part is privacy. I don't want the Facebook app on…

[dead]

Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app

#180

Post by nailer »

dbbk wrote: post #6

If Meta had put Threads on the AT protocol instead of ActivityPub, things could have been so different... maybe there's still time. The engineering philosophy for AT / Bluesky is incredible, being able to develop your own timeline algorithms, distributed moderation agencies, etc. But whenever I give Bluesky a try unfortunately I just can't find people talking about my interests. This seems like a scale problem, which…

Threads indeed could have used AT protocol to bootstrap Threads audence, but it's likely that a corporate sponsor would not want their brand associated with Bluesky's audience.
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