9 ms·

'Starter packs' have played a central role in Bluesky's rapid growth

70 points by FinnKuhn 1y ago

hombre_fatal 1y ago
It's a great idea. I make a new Twitter account every time I realize I'm stuck in the same thought loops every day with the same timeline. And every time it's pretty annoying to restart from scratch. I'll pick a couple accounts to start off the timeline and then autofollow Twitter's "follow these 7 ppl too" recommendation, but I often start following the similar accounts every time. I'd like an easy way to try out completely different feeds without having to know ahead of time who I want to seed it with.
- WJW 1y ago
  > Be OP > Get stuck in the same thought loops every time on twitter, remake your account in slightly different ways every time until the algorithm catches you again. > Still don't realize it's twitter itself which is the problem. It really sounds you would be better off by just deleting it altogether.
  - Rover222 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - hombre_fatal 1y ago
    If you're going to insult me, at least insult me directly instead saying it in a weird roundabout 3rd person caricature. I get value from Twitter and I just acknowledged that it's quite shit, so you'll have to elaborate on what you think I'm missing. I don't like how it turns my timeline racist/political over time. I mostly follow indie gamedev chit chat. The community is on Twitter. Bluesky/Mastodon aren't a real option. They are a splinter group who complain about Twitter all day and everything is infected with just-as-rotten political discourse.
    - WJW 1y ago
      It's a well known template from the internets, mostly popular on other message boards. I don't actually care about insulting you; it's just a meme that fit the situation well. If you get more value than annoyance from twitter, more power to you. The original post you posted seemed like you were very much annoyed at twitter turning into shit each time, yet you were looking for solution in restarting accounts regularly. I don't think that's the problem: Twitter is just home to a great many shit people and it gets more engagement from exposing the most controversial people to everyone else. Timelines always converge to racism and hatred, no matter who you initially follow. Your desire to follow just indie gamedev talk doesn't matter to Twitter, sadly enough.
delichon 1y ago
I want a button on each user (that opts in) that allows me to see their feed just as they do. A read-only impersonation. When I see a take that I wildly disagree with I frequently wonder what set of views of the world they are operating from. This feature would help look at the world from behind the eyes of those I need to learn from the most: those that seem to live in a different one. A starter pack in comparison is a one-click embubbler. We need better bubble explorers and comparers. Like "Grok, me and @joe disagree on <topic-x>. Compare the relevant items in each of our feeds and summarize the difference in values, facts and sources that we consume."
- righthand 1y ago
  Personal tracking? What is stopping you from building a bot that uses this feature to view other peoples personal taste and building a shadow profile that then is used to manipulate them? You can already do this by scraping their follows list and building a pseudo display of what a person looked at.
  - tokyolights2 1y ago
    You are just describing what advertisers actually do in practice. Maybe if everyone had the same access people would realize how invasive it is.
    - righthand 1y ago
      So we give everyone single click access and people become bigger monsters or people wake up finally? Make it a separate tool.
    - bombcar 1y ago
      Advertisers less track you and more decide what demographic bucket to stick you in. It’s a subtle but important (and hard to admit) difference; because it relies on realizing that we’re not special snowflakes, but we have a whole group of people we’re like.
      - 1y ago
PaulKeeble 1y ago
The bluesky transfer extension helps a lot as well, helps you find the same users you follow on twitter on bluesky. https://www.sky-follower-bridge.dev/ https://www.sky-follower-bridge.dev/
moomoo11 1y ago
Cool. OT but I must be a weirdo because I just don’t get any satisfaction out of these apps. I just don’t give that much of a shit about what other people think or say. HN is enough for me lol.
- kgwxd 1y ago
  i give a shit about what some people think and say about some things, but there's no one who's every thought i want to know. don't care how anyone feels about anyone else, if that level of sharing doesn't get annoying eventually, you're still in the honeymoon phase, or you're just lying to yourself.
  - moomoo11 1y ago
    More that I don’t care to “follow” and “like” people. Just being honest like I said I don’t give a crap what people think or say for the most part.
- AlienRobot 1y ago
  The only social media app I can stomach is Tumblr, because people share lots of cool photos and art there. It's weird because on Tumblr you can post posts of any size, place images anywhere you want, edit posts, edit tags afterwards, and all this cool stuff... but no, people WANT to use the character-limited immutable post with embedded hashtags thing for some reason. I don't get it.
- harimau777 1y ago
  Twitter and Bsky are also big platforms for artists sharing their work due to censorship issues on other platforms.
- seabombs 1y ago
  I deleted Twitter years ago as I was getting over it. When Bluesky starting take off it sounded like it was "Twitter but better", so I created an account. Felt just the same as Twitter. Lot's of rage bait, hot takes and tired jokes (in my opinion). This was my default feed to be fair, if I'd taken the time to follow some good people maybe it would be better.
pnw 1y ago
I thought Bluesky usage was declining? Sites like https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats show a 10 to 20% drop across most metrics in the last year.
- paradox460 1y ago
  Never let the truth get in the way of a good story
  - ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
    As I said in another comment, all of these statements are true. Blue Sky blew up very quickly and starter parks were a key part of that. Blue Sky is also losing users which I find to be expected. Threads is quickly gaining users because of network effects. If you have an Instagram account, you have a Threads account.
    - matthewdgreen 1y ago
      How has threads managed to gain 275m users while producing absolutely zero impact on any other part of society? Are you sure these are actual human beings and not just Instagram users who are being baited into clicking through and "signing up" for a service they don't use?
      - ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
        Am I sure they aren't? No, in fact I think that is exactly what they are. Or people that made an account out of curiosity because it is so easy to do so. However, that delves into speculation and we won't get a full answer on that because Meta will never say.
        matthewdgreen 1y ago
        I'll say -- when I see a single bit of Threads discussion impinge upon my life, the news I read and watch, or any other place that culture happens. The people who should actually care are advertisers, who are probably getting scammed for vast numbers of dollars.
zzzeek 1y ago
Sorry we were just told that Threads is quickly catching up to X in terms of users and that Bluesky is a flat line at the bottom of the graph compared to them [1] [1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-daily-app-users-new-data-shows/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-dail...
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
  All of these are true. Bluesky blew up because it was the first large "not Twitter" social media and it has solid communities. Threads has blown past them because of network effects. If you have an instagram account, you have a Threads account just waiting to be activated. It's very easy transition. The great thing about decentralized social network is that you can easily push to all of those accounts and if I were Bluesky, I would make it easy to link Threads and Mastodon to Bluesky so you can push messages to all 3.
Rover222 1y ago
[dead]
sandspar 1y ago
Sounds like a form of social proof combined with low friction following? Authors say it creates a "rich get richer" dynamic. Also I wonder if there's a long-term risk that it creates a "everyone follows the same people" effect which may decrease delight, plus decrease chance of random jackpot posts that come out of nowhere and hook everyone for a day. If I've diagnosed correctly then I'm sure that Bluesky has figured out answers to these but I'm not sure how.

70 points by FinnKuhn 1y ago

It's a great idea. I make a new Twitter account every time I realize I'm stuck in the same thought loops every day with the same timeline. And every time it's pretty annoying to restart from scratch. I'll pick a couple accounts to start off the timeline and then autofollow Twitter's "follow these 7 ppl too" recommendation, but I often start following the similar accounts every time. I'd like an easy way to try out completely different feeds without having to know ahead of time who I want to seed it with.

WJW 1y ago
> Be OP > Get stuck in the same thought loops every time on twitter, remake your account in slightly different ways every time until the algorithm catches you again. > Still don't realize it's twitter itself which is the problem. It really sounds you would be better off by just deleting it altogether.
- Rover222 1y ago
  [flagged]
- hombre_fatal 1y ago
  If you're going to insult me, at least insult me directly instead saying it in a weird roundabout 3rd person caricature. I get value from Twitter and I just acknowledged that it's quite shit, so you'll have to elaborate on what you think I'm missing. I don't like how it turns my timeline racist/political over time. I mostly follow indie gamedev chit chat. The community is on Twitter. Bluesky/Mastodon aren't a real option. They are a splinter group who complain about Twitter all day and everything is infected with just-as-rotten political discourse.
  - WJW 1y ago
    It's a well known template from the internets, mostly popular on other message boards. I don't actually care about insulting you; it's just a meme that fit the situation well. If you get more value than annoyance from twitter, more power to you. The original post you posted seemed like you were very much annoyed at twitter turning into shit each time, yet you were looking for solution in restarting accounts regularly. I don't think that's the problem: Twitter is just home to a great many shit people and it gets more engagement from exposing the most controversial people to everyone else. Timelines always converge to racism and hatred, no matter who you initially follow. Your desire to follow just indie gamedev talk doesn't matter to Twitter, sadly enough.

delichon 1y ago

I want a button on each user (that opts in) that allows me to see their feed just as they do. A read-only impersonation. When I see a take that I wildly disagree with I frequently wonder what set of views of the world they are operating from. This feature would help look at the world from behind the eyes of those I need to learn from the most: those that seem to live in a different one. A starter pack in comparison is a one-click embubbler. We need better bubble explorers and comparers. Like "Grok, me and @joe disagree on <topic-x>. Compare the relevant items in each of our feeds and summarize the difference in values, facts and sources that we consume."

righthand 1y ago
Personal tracking? What is stopping you from building a bot that uses this feature to view other peoples personal taste and building a shadow profile that then is used to manipulate them? You can already do this by scraping their follows list and building a pseudo display of what a person looked at.
- tokyolights2 1y ago
  You are just describing what advertisers actually do in practice. Maybe if everyone had the same access people would realize how invasive it is.
  - righthand 1y ago
    So we give everyone single click access and people become bigger monsters or people wake up finally? Make it a separate tool.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    Advertisers less track you and more decide what demographic bucket to stick you in. It’s a subtle but important (and hard to admit) difference; because it relies on realizing that we’re not special snowflakes, but we have a whole group of people we’re like.
    - 1y ago

PaulKeeble 1y ago

The bluesky transfer extension helps a lot as well, helps you find the same users you follow on twitter on bluesky. https://www.sky-follower-bridge.dev/ https://www.sky-follower-bridge.dev/

moomoo11 1y ago

Cool. OT but I must be a weirdo because I just don’t get any satisfaction out of these apps. I just don’t give that much of a shit about what other people think or say. HN is enough for me lol.

kgwxd 1y ago
i give a shit about what some people think and say about some things, but there's no one who's every thought i want to know. don't care how anyone feels about anyone else, if that level of sharing doesn't get annoying eventually, you're still in the honeymoon phase, or you're just lying to yourself.
- moomoo11 1y ago
  More that I don’t care to “follow” and “like” people. Just being honest like I said I don’t give a crap what people think or say for the most part.
AlienRobot 1y ago
The only social media app I can stomach is Tumblr, because people share lots of cool photos and art there. It's weird because on Tumblr you can post posts of any size, place images anywhere you want, edit posts, edit tags afterwards, and all this cool stuff... but no, people WANT to use the character-limited immutable post with embedded hashtags thing for some reason. I don't get it.
harimau777 1y ago
Twitter and Bsky are also big platforms for artists sharing their work due to censorship issues on other platforms.
seabombs 1y ago
I deleted Twitter years ago as I was getting over it. When Bluesky starting take off it sounded like it was "Twitter but better", so I created an account. Felt just the same as Twitter. Lot's of rage bait, hot takes and tired jokes (in my opinion). This was my default feed to be fair, if I'd taken the time to follow some good people maybe it would be better.

pnw 1y ago

I thought Bluesky usage was declining? Sites like https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats show a 10 to 20% drop across most metrics in the last year.

paradox460 1y ago
Never let the truth get in the way of a good story
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
  As I said in another comment, all of these statements are true. Blue Sky blew up very quickly and starter parks were a key part of that. Blue Sky is also losing users which I find to be expected. Threads is quickly gaining users because of network effects. If you have an Instagram account, you have a Threads account.
  - matthewdgreen 1y ago
    How has threads managed to gain 275m users while producing absolutely zero impact on any other part of society? Are you sure these are actual human beings and not just Instagram users who are being baited into clicking through and "signing up" for a service they don't use?
    - ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
      Am I sure they aren't? No, in fact I think that is exactly what they are. Or people that made an account out of curiosity because it is so easy to do so. However, that delves into speculation and we won't get a full answer on that because Meta will never say.
      - matthewdgreen 1y ago
        I'll say -- when I see a single bit of Threads discussion impinge upon my life, the news I read and watch, or any other place that culture happens. The people who should actually care are advertisers, who are probably getting scammed for vast numbers of dollars.

zzzeek 1y ago

Sorry we were just told that Threads is quickly catching up to X in terms of users and that Bluesky is a flat line at the bottom of the graph compared to them [1] [1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-daily-app-users-new-data-shows/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-dail...

ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
All of these are true. Bluesky blew up because it was the first large "not Twitter" social media and it has solid communities. Threads has blown past them because of network effects. If you have an instagram account, you have a Threads account just waiting to be activated. It's very easy transition. The great thing about decentralized social network is that you can easily push to all of those accounts and if I were Bluesky, I would make it easy to link Threads and Mastodon to Bluesky so you can push messages to all 3.

Rover222 1y ago

[dead]

sandspar 1y ago

Sounds like a form of social proof combined with low friction following? Authors say it creates a "rich get richer" dynamic. Also I wonder if there's a long-term risk that it creates a "everyone follows the same people" effect which may decrease delight, plus decrease chance of random jackpot posts that come out of nowhere and hook everyone for a day. If I've diagnosed correctly then I'm sure that Bluesky has figured out answers to these but I'm not sure how.