10+ tips and services for new Bluesky users
For the past two or three weeks, upstart social network Bluesky has been attractinglarge numbers of new users every day, a crowd that quite evidently includes many Apple device users the app has at timestopped Apples App Store charts in the run-up to Thanksgiving in the US. Ive been using it for a little while and have collected a handful of hints and services that can optimize the experience for anyone migrating to theincreasingly busy social network.Whats interesting about Bluesky is that while it lacks some of the features you can find on other social sites, the conversation seems subjectively better and the lack of ads and sponsored posts along with the absence of algorithmic recommendations from people you dont want to hear from make for a pleasant social media experience.A place for friends?One thing about the service is that it is a good internet citizen, which means it does not throttle outbound links and does not punish posters by reducing visibility of their posts simply for sharing them.Among other things, this means traffic from the service to The Boston Globe is already three times what that publication achieves from Threads. It also means the Globe is seeing significantly more of those readers converting to a subscription account.In other words, while at roughly 22 million users, Bluesky remains a relatively small service. But the people using it appear to be actively doing so, which means it can generate decent traffic. That openness also means that data you share via the service is in the clear and can and will be picked up to train AI models and so on. There isno privacy there, and this should be clearly understood everything you post is out in the open, so dont share what you dont want everyone to know. At the same time, by virtue of the service being so open, it can deliver an even better experience with the help from third-party tools and services like these.Thread summariesOne thing we all used to use in X, thread summaries arent natively available on Bluesky, but you can use Skyview to quickly and easily create summaries. Just mention@skyview.socialwith unroll anywhere in a thread and receive a link to view/share the entire conversation. The downside might be that all the unroll requests end up being visible on Skyviews account (though to be fair, everything you do is already stored somewhere on every social media service its just that Skyview lets you see it, too).Publish threadsBack in the olden days it was possible to publish entire conversations using a link from what was then Twitter. These turned up across numerous websites and within innumerable stories. Then it got switched off. The good news is that to some extent the good times are back. To turn a thread into a shareable web page useSkywriter.blue, which turns a Bluesky post URL into a shareable webpage. While this doesnt yet work as an embed, it is at least now a page.Mute a threadYou might need to know this in case you get involved in a conversation that blows up and you dont want to receive additional alerts concerning it. To mute a thread, just tap the three dots on the right of any post in that thread and then choose Mute Thread from the options there. Additional tools youll find when you tap those three dots include:TranslateCopy post textSend via direct messageShareMute words & tagsHide reply for me.What lists are you on?If you are interested in finding out what lists you are on, who you have blocked, and who has blocked you, visitclearsky.app, enter the relevant handle, and take a look.Find more Starter PacksYoull find a directory of all Starter Packs collections of recommended people to follow usually chosen to represent specific topics or subject areas atBlueskydirectory.com. Explore here to find more collections from which to cherry-pick those you wish to follow, or just explore the comic genius of this Starter Pack aboutmen called Geoff.Starter Packs can become listsBlueSky users are incredibly busy building Starter Packs. They cover multiple bases independent book publishers,RStats Ecosystem Maintainers,dogs of Bluesky, for example and are maintained and provided by volunteers. The idea is that you can visit these collections and select people you want to follow or follow the entire list. Its a good way to build a solid selection of feeds for your interests.Lists are another thing. Lists are groups of accounts that can be used to curate feeds, follow interests, and so on. You might use these to track your favorite writers, researchers, or other high-profile people you want to keep an eye on that way you dont need to follow them. The great thing about lists is that, unlike Starter Packs, you can choose to create a separate feed in your own window that follows posts from that list; I follow the BlueSky Team list, for example. This lets me monitor posts in that list without following more people.But what if you want to turn a Starter Pack into a list, so you can create your own window to follow? You can! Just use thePack2List web app,where you can paste the URL of that Starter Pack and choose to follow it as a list. That means that all the content in one of those Starter Packs can be made easily available on your account without you following each person on the list.More people to followOne quick way to find other like-minded souls might be to find people you do not yet follow who are followed by lots of people you do follow. You do this using the Bluesky network analyzer, which youllfind right here.Use Bluesky like TweetdeckAnyone out there with a memory that extends further than a few of months might remember Tweetdeck, the incredibly useful tool used by so many professionals to read and manage Tweets. Something very like it is now available to Bluesky users.Deck.Blueis an app you can connect to an account that lets you explore your skeets in a multi-column layout, so you can monitor all your posts, posts from lists you follow, searches, notifications, hashtags whatever you need. You can also use Deck.Blue to schedule posts, though this is currently a fee-based feature. The tool also works withBuffer, so you can monitor your LinkedIn, Mastodon, and Bluesky channels in one place.Search toolsThe search tools in Bluesky can help you in several ways, for example:Find a specific phrase:Use quotes around keywords, such as Austrian Airlines to find skeets thatinclude that phrase.Hashtag search:Use any term with an # prefix to find any post with that tag.Find people:You can search for posts that mention specific people using their Bluesky handle or use from: and a user handle to find all posts from a user.URL:Paste in a URL to see all the posts that have shared that URL.There are many more. Two additional third-party tools you should find useful areSkythread,which lets you search for a thread and comments using the thread link, andLabel Scanner, which enables you to verify which labels have been applied to an account.Alternative clientsBluesky offers its own client, but the experience on an iPad is pretty bad. If you want to use the service on an iPad, take a look atSkeets, which is better and includes a host of additional features, some of which you must pay for. Other alternative Bluesky browsers includethe aforementionedDeck.blue,SkyFeed, andSkeetDeck. There are more, and with millions migrating to the service, it is likely additional options will appear pretty swiftly for a while. You will need an app password to make any of these services work. Rather than using your actual account password, I utterly urge youto create an auxiliary app password. You can use this to give the clients the access they need to work for you, while keeping your primary password secure. Finally, for even more insights into using Bluesky,visit this page.You can follow me on social media! Join me onBlueSky, LinkedIn,Mastodon, andMeWe.
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