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Well given Elon's continuing shenanigans at Twitter that moment is probably still ongoing, and the competition is still wide open. I do think Bluesky may have

Well given Elon's continuing shenanigans at Twitter that moment is probably still ongoing, and the competition is still wide open. I do think Bluesky may have chose the wrong launch strategy by using the old and tired invite-only method. But hard to say for sure. If they had fully opened to the public last year or the year before, they might have gotten a large influx of users, who would then complain that it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Twitter, which had 10+ years to develop them. So who knows. At least with invites, they made sure to get people who really wanted to be there, even if it was a smaller crowd.

roenxi 2y ago
> I do think Bluesky may have chose the wrong launch strategy by using the old and tired invite-only method. But hard to say for sure. Hard to say indeed. I'm not sure how a social network bootstrap method can get "old and tired" either - humans don't change how they socialise that quickly! Facebook achieved remarkable things by starting in the Ivy League community then branching out, it really stands as a fascinating example of how curating the early community is critical in the bootstrapping process for a social network. I'm happy to bet that there is a 0.01 to 1% of the population who actually matters for getting groups of people to use something, and if a social network manages to find them then it will succeed, invites or not. It could be that there is too much dross out there for free for all signups early on. To me it looks like a core community should be established first.
- SkyMarshal 2y ago
  > Hard to say indeed. I'm not sure how a social network bootstrap method can get "old and tired" either - humans don't change how they socialise that quickly! But they do get wise to things like false scarcity of digital goods or artificial gatekeeping, and it puts them off. When a strategy is no longer novel or original, its loses its effect. Yes that early core community can really set the tone for a long time, and may have been worth it. On the other hand, an even bigger risk to a social network is not getting enough community to cause positive feedback effects and organic hockey-stick user growth. Failure to launch. Especially with a glut of social media competitors crowding the landscape.
_akhe 2y ago
They should have hired more builder types and great designers. IMO they had all the press on their side, riding the decentralization wave, and really were given an excellent opportunity, it's a shame. Product took forever and when it finally came out it wasn't impressive. They should have staffed up some badass devs & designers who ship or even considered a top tier agency who would have made something truly stunning. Test the market at each step. Decentralization deserved better! I think a good comparison is OpenAI (including the whole "are they open vs closed" part that Bluesky had to deal with). OpenAI has done an excellent job of: 1) Releasing good products on a good cadence 2) Keeping us waiting in suspense for the next big thing. Decentralization has a very high excitement potential - I think Bluesky just dropped the ball. Didn't prioritize product.
- arcalinea 2y ago
  Bluesky CEO here. We were founded to build a protocol for Twitter, and likely would have died as a project within Twitter had I not spent half of 2021 negotiating for our independence. In 2022, I got funding and began building an independent protocol team that was still consulting with Twitter on how they might integrate an open protocol. Elon buying Twitter was the factor that changed our plans and led us to build an app, as it became clear a path to adoption within Twitter would never pan out. We were not set up as a product team given the legacy of our origins, but did the best we could last spring, shipping an app to hundreds of thousands of users with just one app dev, pfraze. OpenAI has been around for nine years, and while what they've done is truly impressive, launching projects with a fully-staffed engineering team is very different from building a team as you grow a userbase. Hindsight is 20/20 when it comes to market timing, but our goal from the start has been to deliver a decentralized social experience with good UX, and deliver on the previously theoretical concepts of algorithmic choice and community moderation in a global public square. Because of this, our product focus has been driven by showing what's possible on an open protocol, and only after doing things like custom feeds and third-party labelers have we circled back on some more basic features users have been requesting like DMs and video. We still believe decentralization, and the innovation it enables for social, has high potential, and are always looking at how we can better surface it in the app.
pfraze 2y ago
We couldn’t handle the server load and had to build a T&S team. The invites were the only thing that stopped us from collapsing.
- SkyMarshal 2y ago
  Gotcha good to know, thanks for commenting. I'll just repeat what I said to arca above, also to you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40294432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40294432. I think one of your biggest competitive advantages is just a sane decent core team, who attract similar people from their network. A sane and decent core community is a refreshing change from Twitter's increasingly crazy and distasteful one, and a federated protocol is inherently more trustworthy than centralized ones like Twitter or Threads. I hope the nexus of those two things helps you take off in 2024. Good luck!
pixxel 2y ago
> given Elon's continuing shenanigans at Twitter that moment is probably still ongoing, and the competition is still wide open What shenanigans? When he fired a whole load of staff there were cries of Twitter’s demise. The opposite has happened: many new features added (more than the previous 10+ years?) and site stability is solid. So how is the competition “wide open”. I use Mastodon (since 2017) but I’m not kidding myself about the small fringe userbase (I like it this way BTW). And Dorsey has just binned bsky and championed Twitter. A small contingent detest Musk so much that it obscures observable reality.
- foinker 2y ago
  I consider myself a Musk detester, and you're definitely right that all those calls for Twitter/X's death were wishful thinking at best. But I don't think that these supposed new features have anything to do with the continued use of the site (stability being solid is the baseline expectation so congrats I guess?) Lot's of people deleted their accounts forever in the past 2 years and were replaced with crypto shills, bots, and propagandists (it's all the same to Musk). Everyone else stayed because of inertia. The site will continue to be one of the most popular in the world largely because people don't want to "redo Twitter" on a new website. It really doesn't matter what Musk does.

roenxi 2y ago

> I do think Bluesky may have chose the wrong launch strategy by using the old and tired invite-only method. But hard to say for sure. Hard to say indeed. I'm not sure how a social network bootstrap method can get "old and tired" either - humans don't change how they socialise that quickly! Facebook achieved remarkable things by starting in the Ivy League community then branching out, it really stands as a fascinating example of how curating the early community is critical in the bootstrapping process for a social network. I'm happy to bet that there is a 0.01 to 1% of the population who actually matters for getting groups of people to use something, and if a social network manages to find them then it will succeed, invites or not. It could be that there is too much dross out there for free for all signups early on. To me it looks like a core community should be established first.

SkyMarshal 2y ago
> Hard to say indeed. I'm not sure how a social network bootstrap method can get "old and tired" either - humans don't change how they socialise that quickly! But they do get wise to things like false scarcity of digital goods or artificial gatekeeping, and it puts them off. When a strategy is no longer novel or original, its loses its effect. Yes that early core community can really set the tone for a long time, and may have been worth it. On the other hand, an even bigger risk to a social network is not getting enough community to cause positive feedback effects and organic hockey-stick user growth. Failure to launch. Especially with a glut of social media competitors crowding the landscape.

_akhe 2y ago

They should have hired more builder types and great designers. IMO they had all the press on their side, riding the decentralization wave, and really were given an excellent opportunity, it's a shame. Product took forever and when it finally came out it wasn't impressive. They should have staffed up some badass devs & designers who ship or even considered a top tier agency who would have made something truly stunning. Test the market at each step. Decentralization deserved better! I think a good comparison is OpenAI (including the whole "are they open vs closed" part that Bluesky had to deal with). OpenAI has done an excellent job of: 1) Releasing good products on a good cadence 2) Keeping us waiting in suspense for the next big thing. Decentralization has a very high excitement potential - I think Bluesky just dropped the ball. Didn't prioritize product.

arcalinea 2y ago
Bluesky CEO here. We were founded to build a protocol for Twitter, and likely would have died as a project within Twitter had I not spent half of 2021 negotiating for our independence. In 2022, I got funding and began building an independent protocol team that was still consulting with Twitter on how they might integrate an open protocol. Elon buying Twitter was the factor that changed our plans and led us to build an app, as it became clear a path to adoption within Twitter would never pan out. We were not set up as a product team given the legacy of our origins, but did the best we could last spring, shipping an app to hundreds of thousands of users with just one app dev, pfraze. OpenAI has been around for nine years, and while what they've done is truly impressive, launching projects with a fully-staffed engineering team is very different from building a team as you grow a userbase. Hindsight is 20/20 when it comes to market timing, but our goal from the start has been to deliver a decentralized social experience with good UX, and deliver on the previously theoretical concepts of algorithmic choice and community moderation in a global public square. Because of this, our product focus has been driven by showing what's possible on an open protocol, and only after doing things like custom feeds and third-party labelers have we circled back on some more basic features users have been requesting like DMs and video. We still believe decentralization, and the innovation it enables for social, has high potential, and are always looking at how we can better surface it in the app.

pfraze 2y ago

We couldn’t handle the server load and had to build a T&S team. The invites were the only thing that stopped us from collapsing.

SkyMarshal 2y ago
Gotcha good to know, thanks for commenting. I'll just repeat what I said to arca above, also to you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40294432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40294432. I think one of your biggest competitive advantages is just a sane decent core team, who attract similar people from their network. A sane and decent core community is a refreshing change from Twitter's increasingly crazy and distasteful one, and a federated protocol is inherently more trustworthy than centralized ones like Twitter or Threads. I hope the nexus of those two things helps you take off in 2024. Good luck!

pixxel 2y ago

> given Elon's continuing shenanigans at Twitter that moment is probably still ongoing, and the competition is still wide open What shenanigans? When he fired a whole load of staff there were cries of Twitter’s demise. The opposite has happened: many new features added (more than the previous 10+ years?) and site stability is solid. So how is the competition “wide open”. I use Mastodon (since 2017) but I’m not kidding myself about the small fringe userbase (I like it this way BTW). And Dorsey has just binned bsky and championed Twitter. A small contingent detest Musk so much that it obscures observable reality.

foinker 2y ago
I consider myself a Musk detester, and you're definitely right that all those calls for Twitter/X's death were wishful thinking at best. But I don't think that these supposed new features have anything to do with the continued use of the site (stability being solid is the baseline expectation so congrats I guess?) Lot's of people deleted their accounts forever in the past 2 years and were replaced with crypto shills, bots, and propagandists (it's all the same to Musk). Everyone else stayed because of inertia. The site will continue to be one of the most popular in the world largely because people don't want to "redo Twitter" on a new website. It really doesn't matter what Musk does.