I've heard from a few people here that they don't get "much engagement" on Bluesky, and therefore are going elsewhere. But I notice that, for many of them, they don't engage themselves. They don't respond to others or reskeet interesting things. If you want engagement, it helps to engage...
Somebody (idk if that’s bluesky, users, or something else) could do a better job of making it clear what feeds are, though. I’ve “met” so many people via feeds.
I haven’t gone through onboarding flow recently but I am definitely surprised by the number of new accounts that don’t seem to have tried looking at feeds when that is a flagship feature
new person here, and tbh the ambiguity of how some of them work may be part of why (e.g. "Discover" is pretty opaque at a glance)
i'm the weirdo that digs about though so i searched out a feed closer to how i want posts shown to me. some (many?) won't bother with that
Thanks for the tip Thomas.
I'm new here and hadn't found out yet that "feeds" is that special shiny thing I have to try out more often. I'm most often scrolling just simply through what I see in "home".
Unfortunately feeds turned out to be... Well, not exactly intuitive. I've been here for months, I follow several feeds, but I forget they exist 90% of the time, bc they're so well hidden. And whenever I go there, a bug in the app makes it hard to get back to the home feed. /1
It also costs spoons and isn't all that accessible. (Like much of Bluesky so far, unfortunately.)
So it's not just not knowing. Feeds are also not built for everyone. 😕
What I did was switch on the thing that throws posts from your feeds into your main follow feed, so you get a feel for them. Also, you can set a few of them to display to the right of your default feeds, and that makes it easy to jump in and out of them at will
I think that the social network is like an assembly of a political party or of an ONG. People go there to discuss problems or proposals. Of course you can make friends in these gatherings, but that is not their main purpose.
Frienship is more a like a WhatsApp liaison.
In one of his data dumps, Elon showed that the Xitter algorithm was hardcoded to favor his tweets, but he also revealed that other accounts got this boost too (I.e. Stephen King, AOC). I think a lot of those big names wouldn’t know how to build an audience without that leg up
Io personalmente li uso ma nn mi interessano gli algoritmi mi piace guardare news e pubblicare foto o frasi con amici e parenti e scrivere con whatsapp mi rende felice perché sono in contatto con loro anche chat e telefonicamente
every “big account” that I’ve seen on here that actually engages with the site gets a ton of engagement in return
the ceiling on a post going viral here is much lower given the smaller population but regular conversations get a ton of back and forth if you participate
I think that people who are used to manipulating the algorithm also probably find having to get engagement by just being entertaining/fun to talk to... different. 😬
I really like seeing a lot of familiar faces in the threads, along with a rotating cast of regulars, and frequent infusions of new (to me) people. feels a bit more like a lively neighborhood bar
twitter feels like A Night at the Garden
bluesky bar has everything — loveable nerds, kind-hearted freakshows, a red panda, garrulous drunks, neil gaiman, a rowdy trans table, a sloppy-but-compelling game of european conquest, wifeguys cheerfully calling it a night, the occasional sexpest
Definitely this! The lower population makes this much more likely, but also people seem to be here *because* they want to chat with folks.
The "block the jerks and move on, keep it positive" ethos seems to help a lot too.
Hell, I randomly get followers despite NOT following back about half the time. All the follows I have are BEFORE BlueSky completely opened and I did that back in August last year.
You just gotta post some funny now and then and get followers.
(Private accounts so I can bitch, when, Paul!?)
my experience so far, as somebody who isn't interested in posting much myself, as opposed to seeing and occasionally chiming in on conversations: the vibe here is a lot more welcoming. you end up interacting with more people and more genuinely. more happily bullshitting about shared interests.
Replies are everything, which makes it hard for people who want to just lurk and have no personality. The interactions I've had on here have been way higher quality than anything on Twitter. I've even had lengthy arguments where people ended up being convinced (and admitting it!)
I've definitely noticed that, yes.
MY problem is that I like to spend my time doing something else (coding, playing, etc) and I self-limit my time here because if I don't, that hole will get too deep. But, I'm fine with all that. It works with me.
I generally engage on an equal opportunity basis with people I know (including from the original AoNZ Twitter migration) and with bigger accounts whose stuff I enjoy, as I’m doing here – just following my nose and having fun, not trying to get plucked from obscurity on the Twitter model
Making an app called "Soapbox" where you receive likes and resoaps. Some are real, and some are not, but you never know the ratio of real to fake (it's randomized), and the deluded can be as deluded as they want
