Blue Sky Has the Potential to Be Big

The text came on Friday in the late afternoon from my good friend, fellow writing homie, and work wife Michelle Webber. "Do you want an invite code to Blue Sky?"

"Hell yes!" I said.

For those who don't know, Blue Sky is being heralded as THE competitive alternative to Twitter X. The decentralized social network was created by Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter. Dorsey started developing the social network in 2019. The original goal was to use Blue Sky as a sandbox for a new structure that Twitter could adopt if it was deemed successful. Aaaand then the company was bought by Elon Musk, Dorsey was let go, and now Twitter, X, or whatever you want to call it has turned into an ugly dumpster fire. I mean, it was a dumpster fire before Musk took it over. But at least the platform still had some charm to it.

Anyway, you're not here to talk shop about Twitter X. You're here to learn about Blue Sky, how the heck to use it, and if it's actually all it's cracked up to be. With all the hype around it I was skeptical, especially after all the hype around Instagram's Threads—but that's a whole different discussion/blog post.

After being on Blue Sky for a little over a week though, I can honestly say it lives up to the hype and I'm a big fan. The platform is easy to navigate and the Feeds make it easy to find communities that are meaningful to you, as well as not be flooded with noise from random people who you don't follow. Essentially, Dorsey looked at what Twitter did well and where it had backed itself into a corner, and then edited accordingly. Since Twitter was a centralized network One thing that Twitter started to do as it got older was it started to flood your home feed with random people who you didn’t follow or have never interacted with but because they were talking about the same topics as you, you both got dumped into the same bucket, which is annoying because it often drowns out the people you do like to interact with.

Blue Sky has two buckets: Your home feed and your communal feeds. The Home Feed is where you can see posts, reposts, and likes from people you follow. Communal feeds are where you can see posts, reposts, and likes from everyone and anyone who's talking about a specific topic. Think of the Home Feed like your living room with all your friends hanging out and then the Communal Feed like the block part you all are heading to together. The Communal Feeds are divided up by topics, some more general, others more niche. Each Communal Feed has a description of what's talked about and what keywords and/or hashtags the Feed picks up.

For example, as soon as I joined, I immediately searched the "Writing Community" (I know, shocking). In the description, it gave a description and then said that it uses "#WritingCommunity". I also went poking around for movie Feeds and came across a Star Wars one that pulls in any posts that mention "Star Wars" or a Star Wars character.

And yes, even if you don't follow that specific Feed, your posts can still wind up in it, which is phenomenal from a discoverability standpoint. As Blue Sky grows, I would be curious to see how sophisticated this could get because it would allow for people to find whole new communities they not even be aware of and communities may find new people to bring into their tribe.

But no matter which Feeds or how many you follow, you can also turn down the noise, hang out in your Home Feed, and interact with the people you follow. My main complaint with the changes Twitter has rolled out since 2020 is how random people just show up because they're talking about topics Twitter X's algorithm thinks I would be interested in. For the past three years, it feels as if someone cranked up the volume on Twitter X, creating overwhelming and unnecessary noise in an attempt to keep people on the platform for longer periods. However, as we're seeing the noise is frustrating many users and actually driving them away from the platform because now it's harder to have authentic interactions with followers and the communities you want to be part of. I've had and seen more in-depth conversations on Blue Sky than attention-seeking Q&As that are running rampant on Twitter X.

The one aspect that I'm still curious to learn about is how Feeds are created and what the parameters are for making them. I have yet to figure out how to make one myself and given that the app is in the beta stage, I doubt it's a feature I'll have for a while.

Nevertheless, I think it's safe to say that Blue Sky has MASSIVE potential to become the heir to Twitter and a major competitor for X. I won't go as far to say that it will blow X out of the water yet because I think Musk is only getting started in terms of the changes we'll be seeing on that platform. But I do feel confident in saying that if your goal is engagement in a few specific topics or communities, Blue Sky might just be the app for you.