About seven years ago one of the first federated social networks appeared on the internet. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, “federated” just means “not a walled garden” - plays nicely with others.
Where Twitter and Facebook attempted to ring-fence users into a tightly controlled and monitored world, Mastodon allowed for a proliferation of worlds that could freely communicate with each other. Anyone on any world could follow anyone on any other world - as long as the world adhered to the same basic communication protocols.
The founders of Twitter watched the emergence of Mastodon and the evolution of the “fediverse” as it came to be known, and started to re-imagine what a federated social media platform might be.
Mastodon was good, but it was very much a “first try”. It had (and still has) problems. It’s worth noting that the founders of Twitter have form when it comes to thinking about the longer term, and being “good citizens”. The widely used “Bootstrap” framework that many websites use to implement responsive interface designs orginated at Twitter under their stewardship.
Of course the story gets very complicated in the years that followed - Twitter became X, Threads appeared, and Mastodon has seemingly falling into the shadows.
The project that was quietly started at Twitter was spun off before the sale to Elon Musk. It grew into a re-imagining of how social media platforms should perhaps work - with features they should perhaps have - and giving users the controls the absolutely wanted. Launching in a limited, invitation only basis a year ago, Bluesky slowly garnered a few hundred thousand users.
Five days ago Bluesky launched to the world - Bluesky (bsky.social)
I’ve never seen an exodus quite like it. If “X” wasn’t in trouble before, it surely is now. I keep seeing the same sentiments from users arriving from the former Twitter - “it’s good to be home”.
About a million people a day are arriving - and the influx is accelerating.
While it looks like Twitter, Bluesky is a very different animal. During the on-boarding process it’s immediately obvious that as a user you control what you see - and have a great deal of flexibility in determining that. Don’t like spam? Gone. Don’t like re-posts? They’re gone. Don’t like censorship? Gone. Only want to see what your friends have posted? Here you go. Want to see what’s popular at the moment? Done. How about popular with your friends? You can have that too.
To say it’s game changing is a bit of an understatement.
In the longer term, Bluesky is really about how our information is stored, managed, shared, communicated, and protected going forwards - not just between each other, but between computers too. It’s setting out the ground work of “how to play nicely with others”.
It’s about time.
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