Greetings all, I hope this post finds you well. ICYMI, in social media news, over the last few weeks, Bluesky has gained a massive amount of users migrating (or as I like to call it “skygrating”) from X (nee Twitter) as a result of Elon Musk’s November 15 2024 new terms of service. I personally find the skygration reasons legitimate, and that’s to mention many other reasons regarding what the platform has became since Elon took over. Before I continue, I’ll give you some chronological back history of my existence on social media platforms similar to both Bluesky and X
- 2001: Joined BlackPlanet
- 2004: Joined MySpace
- 2006: Joined Twitter (user #14023, Nov 21, 11:52pm)
- 2014: Instagram
- 2017: App Developers Network (adn.net, Mar 14, 1:24 pm (now pnut.io))
- 2017: Mastodon
- 2023: Bluesky (user #25950, Apr 19)
Mastodon was my first taste of using a decentralized network, but I really didn’t use it that long because it didn’t interest me and felt like it was just another social network to keep track of, along with the fact that I wasn’t very familiar with the benefits of using a decentralized network.. I won’t go into detail reasons on why I continued to use the above platforms other than MySpace, at that time, was THE place for sharing music on many levels, BlackPlanet was my OG simply because of why and for who it was created to attract, Instagram was to socially share photos in a way you couldn’t on Flickr, for example. ADN was more a tech atmosphere and, finally, Bluesky, the so-called Twitter replacement.
While this post is not about why I like Bluesky and why I am deactivating my main X account after 18 years, but more about my observations about the massive skygration from X users to Bluesky. As of I type this, Bluesky shows me that I have 2000 followers and following 1500. In my 18 years on X, I’ve never achieved numbers that, on both sides, just because how I’ve continued to use the platform. I was, and still am, of the mindset: quality over quantity, when it comes to social media engagement. I’ve always been more of a consumer of information that interests me vs a social butterfly, so that information I tend to bookmark, archive, whatever such that I can make future use of it accordingly. I’ve also always provide enough in my social media bio to let people generally know what kind of person I am in terms of my interests followed by the general content I post. The combination of the two, I figure (just like everyone else) helps one make a decision as to if they want to follow me or not, as those are the first two things I look at when making my decision.
What I’m finding interesting on Bluesky is the amount of people that follow me (presumably as a result of the skygration) but seem to have nothing in common with me, coupled with the fact that some have followed well over 1000 users, but zero posts, and very little following them back. A general rule of thumb for me I never guarantee a follow back when you follow me (back to the quality over quantity thing). Secondly, having zero posts means I first need to see what you are posting about until I even follow you. Bluesky has instituted a somewhat recent feature called “starter packs”. A starter pack is essentially a group of people who share the same interests, this group (list) is made up by a user and present to the “skyline” for other users to peruse and decide who they want to follow in the group. I suspect that many go through starter packs, sometimes following the whole group, sight unseen, or cherry picking whot they follow, even if a said user has zero posts and/or being followed by other users they have have seen before. I suspect that is how my followers numbers grew to 2000 quickly since 15 November. I’m starting to see the crypto accounts and scammer/AI bot accounts make it over slowly as well – two out of four which I engaged with personally and have now disappeared, the other three I have blocked without engagement. I’m sure more will come.
I’m seeing an influx of content and users from X that share my interests and its very slowly resembling my experience on X, without all the mess that X is now carrying. As of today, Bluesky has exceeded 2 million members. Apparently I have “elder” status there (and if X defines it the same, on there as well). We’ll have to see, as time goes by, how things unfold, based on this article, Bluesky Says It Won’t Screw Things Up. I’m liking Blueskly and glad I got the invite when I did. In the meantime, I’m maintaining an account on X which has the sole purpose of being used to document my #100DaysOfCode journey and interact/receive information on space startup/Python coding/various other tech interest content from users that have yet to make it over to Bluesky. X’s November 15 ToS states that all public tweets will train it’s Grok AI entity….good, mine will train it on Python….something far more useful than much of the GARBAGE it is and will continue to be trained on. As for my main account, as soon as can follow desired accounts from my new account, I will deactivate my main account.
That’s it fornow. Be well, be safe.
Oceans of rhythm…
Fresh.
