Bluesky again

Since my last post in September I’ve grown ever more fond of Bluesky. I look at ex-Twitter less and less. When I do go to Ex-Twitter I still see things of interest, and I retweet a few things, but I’ve not posted any original tweets there for a while.

Growth

Bluesky has grown both in the range of interesting people and posts there and in overall numbers (see this counter – it’s approaching 23mn users at the time of writing).  It feels like it’s the platform of choice for academics who want to leave Muskville. Bluesky is still developing new features, and I’m learning more about how it works.

Mainstream media have noticed its progress, and articles about Bluesky’s growth keep popping up.

Guides

Guides to migrating from Twitter and to using Bluesky are proliferating. I liked what Andy Tattersall said in this thread – he’s trying to encourage people to try Bluesky, but without badgering or guilt-tripping.

There is a guide for academics produced by Ned Potter, a librarian at York university and a couple of guides specifically for scientists, one made by Jonny Coates, preprint and research integrity advocate, and another made by academics Steve Haroz and Mark Rubin

Who to follow?

Starter packs are a feature of Bluesky that has helped its growth. These are curated lists of people/accounts. There is a starter pack for librarians that I found helpful and many more covering a wide range of topics. I also liked the Science Snark and Shitposters starter pack, highlighting posters with attitude. Most of the packs have a disciplinary focus – you can search this starter pack directory to see if there are any in your field. If you really trust the person who has curated the list then you can just blanket follow everyone on the list, otherwise go through and pick accounts you want to follow. Another useful tool created by Theo Sanderson allows you to find ‘people followed by lots of the people you follow’.

As well as following accounts you can try adding some feeds on topics to your profile. This spreadsheet, curated by Brian Krueger, tracks active science-based feeds.

The publishing world is slowly moving towards Bluesky. Some time ago Biorxiv created Bluesky accounts for medRxiv and each of the 24 bioRxiv subject categories. Nature Portfolio created a starter pack with all their editors. EMBO Press is there too while some others (Cell Press, Science, PLOS) have accounts but have not posted yet.

Tech tips

• If you want to post a link to a thread on Bluesky you can use Skyview to ‘unroll’ the thread. If you want Tweetdeck-like dashboard for Bluesky, use Deck Blue.
• There are useful search tips in this post on the Bluesky blog.
• You can find some basic analytics about your Bluesky usage and engagement.
• You can also view a feed of your most popular Bluesky posts.
• There is a way to use red pins as bookmarks, though it has proved very popular and has slowed down recently.

Funnies

I enjoyed this parody of a guide for new users, that I dubbed the Mornington Crescent guide to Bluesky.

Adam Sharp posted about the upset of not being included in a starter pack, which led to someone suggesting a Russell paradox starter pack, of all accounts which are not in a starter pack.

Warnings

Bluesky may not be everyone’s choice, and there’s no guarantee it will remain the flavour of the month.  There have been questions about its owners, and suggestions that strife/toxicity is inherent in all social media platforms, so we should not take too rosy a view.  The most encouraging point is that it has proved possible to move from one place (X) to another place (Bluesky), so if we’ve done it once then we can do it again.