BLUESKY Ahead! The New Disruption - For Real This Time
It’s here.
I mean, Bluesky has been here for a while already, first as an invite-only beta of course. My first skeet (that’s the BlueSKy version of tweet - SKeet) was on September 24th, 2023:
Bluesky Breaking News
But if you haven’t been paying attention…. okay wait… Notice I’m not saying if you’ve “had your head buried in the sand” because just THIS morning I heard on WWJ 950 in Detroit the news about Bluesky adding a million users in the past week. So in fairness, this is pretty much a developing story in terms of it being big mainstream news. Like breaking news as I’m writing this. And yes, it’s big - here’s a little snapshot search result this morning…
And let’s be clear: This is NOT simply about politics. However you feel about the election and Elon Musk the fact is he took over Twitter, changed the name and changed the dynamics. It’s been extremely messy. It’s been overrun by bots and heavily politicized - by the owner who pushed his political agenda into the feed.
X Functionality Fail
First let’s talk about the bots and functionality. In fairness spam and bots are a problem in some form on all platforms but it’s been particularly bad on Twitter/X. When Musk took over the company he fired 6500 out of 8000 employees. There’s no doubt there was fat to be trimmed, and the fact that the platform didn’t completely implode afterwards has me hopeful that maybe, just MAYBE, he’s the right guy to head up a Department of Government Efficiency. But in my opinion you have a lot to answer for when you cut that many people without then offering a clean platform to use. Here’s my last 4 followers just in the last week on X:
All spam bots. Ridiculous. And there’s this perfect summary from Chat GPT (okay sorry I’m cheating for this part):
“Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter, now rebranded as X, the platform has faced numerous functional issues and operational challenges. Major changes included overhauling the verification system, allowing anyone to buy a blue check, which led to widespread impersonation and misinformation incidents—impacting brands like Eli Lilly when fake accounts made false announcements. Additionally, Musk’s drastic staff cuts left the platform understaffed, particularly in content moderation, which contributed to an increase in hate speech and misinformation. These shifts prompted advertisers to pull back, reducing revenue significantly as the platform struggled to maintain brand safety and reliability. Furthermore, changes to content policies and Musk’s exit from the EU’s disinformation code led to diminished trust among both users and stakeholders, who expressed concerns about platform stability and transparency.”
Oh and there’s also the time that my Twitter account was hacked earlier this year and I was completely locked out of it. I reached out to support, tried to provide evidence of who I was, tweeted at them multiple times. NO response (they were probably all fired). I’d been a user since 2009 - I even have my very first tweet that I used in a blog post I wrote about Twitter on the Frameable Faces Photography blog back in 2013...
I had built a ton of relationships there - had about 1200 or so followers. Tons of content. All gone. I tried everything I could to save my account somehow. Eventually the hackers just changed the name of the account from @dougcohen10 to @DOGE_COIN20HD before X somehow “discovered” it was a fake account and suspended it. I created a new @dougcohen10 just to get my name back and tweeted this at them:
Nothing.
Political Poo
As for the recent politicization, when the owner of the platform founds a PAC called “America” and forces tweets from “@America” into the feed aggressively pushing for one party’s agenda? Yikes. Objectively speaking, the platform went from a social network to a campaign machine and you couldn’t escape it as an end user. If there’s a business owner that has done this sort of thing with their brand let me know in the comments….I’ll wait. You’d certainly have to have F-You money to feel comfortable doing that. Elon Musk has F-You money. If you do as well then hey, power to you.
But here’s the thing: People who are flocking to Bluesky are not only finding no Elon Musk and no America PAC there. They are finding a robust platform that is light years ahead of X. A decentralized platform with no single algorithm controlling the feed of end users. It’s open source - this means people have more power to create their own experience on the platform. Better moderation, less commercialization - it’s a straightforward social media experience with more control over your data and your content! NO BOTS and even if and when the bots arrive, the decentralized nature of the platform should make it tougher for them to infect the app (at least I hope so). This is kind of what other decentralized platforms like Mastodon promised, except Mastodon just never became mainstream. Jack Dorsey (the co-founder of Twitter) funded Bluesky while he was still at Twitter. There’s no real learning curve to jump on and use Bluesky if you’re familiar with X - they look and feel exactly the same. Mark Cuban is skeeting on Bluesky now. Bluesky IS the next big thing.
I suspected this was the case with Bluesky for some time, but it just wasn’t quite happening. I’d get on there and attempt to get some activity and connections going here and there but nothing was really happening. In Rant #7 back in December of last year I concluded that X was still the best option between X, Threads and Bluesky. A week ago I posted a rant about social media and I didn’t even mention Bluesky. I even put this poll out on my Instagram story just 5 days ago:
Bluesky Ahead
But SINCE then the narrative has completely changed. Five days since that Instagram poll and it seems like the distant past. That’s how FAST the social media landscape can and does shift right under your feet. And I believe this is one of those watershed moments. And I’m pretty excited about it. I need to Skeet. I often found myself wanting just to say something somewhere without an outlet. I have no real interest in Threads (Instagram’s crappy imitation), and none of the other platforms really allow for quick hitting stream of consciousness thoughts as an outlet like tweeting/skeeting does. I see people kind of doing that on Facebook and it’s just out of place. Same with stories - it’s like playing football (even touch football) on a basketball court. You can do it but it will always be out of place.
So now a Bluesky is ahead indeed, and this is what I did this morning….
Yep - moved Bluesky to my home screen. X-iled X to page 3 - see what I did there?
So let’s connect! A Bluesky is ahead!
Me: @dougcohen10.bsky.social Detroit Jerky: @detroitjerky.bsky.social Frameable Faces Photography: @frameablefaces.bsky.social M10 Social: @m10social.bsky.social
M10 Social is owned by Doug Cohen in West Bloomfield, MI and provides social media training and digital marketing services from the Frameable Faces Photography studio Doug owns with his wife Ally. He can be reached there at tel:248-790-7317, by mobile at tel:248-346-4121 or via email at mailto:doug@frameablefaces.com. You can follow Doug’s band Vintage Playboy at their Facebook page here. You can also visit our other business Detroit Jerky at the website www.DetroitJerkyLLC.com!