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Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

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Re: Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

#281

Post by akerl_ »

pfraze wrote: post #143
tptacek wrote: post #111

I don't understand how Bluesky is going to continue to exist past 2026, based on the sharply declining usage, their headcount, and the amount of funding they've taken. It has apparent value propositions past the social network, but none of those use cases are visibly taking off and none of them appear to be monetizable. The social network itself is what will be evaluated when they go out for more funding. And I don't…

We have multiple years of runway

Sure, but if you’re on a downward trend for growth and don’t have viable paths to change that, runway is just stopping distance.

Re: Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

#282

Post by Braxton1980 »

kelipso wrote: post #156
DonHopkins wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's "political" to disagree about Tylenol causing autism, or injecting disinfectant curing Covid?

You are making a classic motte and bailey argument.

What makes something "political"?

Re: Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

#284

Post by cmxch »

firefax wrote: post #151

Most of my hard science contacts (physics, biology etc) from my days in student government have moved to Bluesky. Newer academics seem to be starting out there and skipping Twitter entirely. If you have heard of Metcalfe's Law, you'll understand why this is not good for Twitter long term. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law

[flagged]

Re: Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

#285

Post by cmxch »

nomdep wrote: post #172
firefax wrote: post #151

Most of my hard science contacts (physics, biology etc) from my days in student government have moved to Bluesky. Newer academics seem to be starting out there and skipping Twitter entirely. If you have heard of Metcalfe's Law, you'll understand why this is not good for Twitter long term. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law

So Bluesky for academia and X for tech and everyone else. I don’t think X is in trouble. Scientist tend to form their own closed communities anyway.

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Re: Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

#287

Post by jdlshore »

sennalen wrote: post #183
tptacek wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just Google these things. Nate Silver posted (grim looking) usage numbers --- followers and posters --- just a couple weeks ago. They very publicly raised a $15MM (priced) A round a year ago, after raising what I understood to be a comparable amount of seed funding. There was talk early this year of them raising again at a $700MM valuation, but I don't see a subsequent announcement that that happened. You can…

Nate Silver is an ideologue who deeply wants BlueSky to be failing.

I think you’re going to need to back that up in order for me to take your claim seriously. I’ve always found Nate Silver to be opinionated, sure, but with opinions based on data.

(To be clear, I’m not disputing that Silver thinks BlueSky is failing—I’ll take your word for that—I’m disputing that he’s doing so because he had an axe to grind rather than data backing him up.)

Re: Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

#288

Post by BearOso »

tptacek wrote: post #173
shrinks99 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharply declining usage? I don't see the stats to back that up on https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats Usage has absolutely declined from peak switching periods where inevitibly some users won't stick around, but that's to be expected. Most stats seem to be leveling off (which isn't exactly stable growth either so the rest of your points stand).

Yeah, I think what you needed to do here is zoom out. That's a sharply declining chart. I understand that as a Bluesky user the peak and dropoff doesn't hurt the experience. But investors are going to put money in with the expectation of a return and what they're going to look at are the derivatives of the adoption curve: how quickly is it gaining users, and is adoption accelerating?

What investors? It isn't a public company, and it's registered as a benefit corporation. Anybody who gives them money should have a clue that its priority is not shareholder returns.

Re: Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

#289

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

biomedicalist wrote: post #165

Most scientists don't have a professional profile on Twitter or Bluesky. It's the most self-aggrandizing ones who tend to do that. The rest of us are just writing papers, presenting at conferences, collaborating with other research groups without any interest in putting it all out there on social media. This whole X versus Bluesky thing is basically irrelevant. Neither of these platforms are good venues for dissemina…

"Neither of these platforms are good venues for dissemination of scientific research."

These "platforms", i.e. other peoples' gigantic websites, are fantasy worlds that cater to self-aggrandisement where relevance requires a presence in that world

The outside world, aka the real world, is under represented and thus ignored

Re: Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

#290

Post by falcor84 »

AndroTux wrote: post #135
falcor84 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a side note, I still can't get used to how wanting to restrict access to guns is considered a "liberal" stance.

The freedom to not have to fear death when going to school comes to mind. You know, like everywhere else in the western world.

The typical political axis is liberty/freedom on one end vs. safety/security on the other end. And this is exactly one of those cases where having the liberty to bear arms reduces safety.
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