First sightseeing flight by Bluesky
The Twitter/X alternative Bluesky has been very popular for a good week now. A brief introduction, not just for newcomers.
Are you new to Bluesky? Welcome! You've been there for a while, but haven't really warmed up to the service because little has happened there so far? Then now is the right time to give Bluesky a second chance, because millions of new users are currently flocking to the blue sky (if you're interested in the latest figures, you can find them at Atlas, for example). This article provides a little guidance.
Show yourself
Those who have been on Bluesky for a while are currently experiencing that many new participants are following them who have neither set up a profile picture nor made a single post. Some "old-timers" are already asking themselves: Are they all bots? It is therefore a good idea to show yourself first if you are new: Upload a banner and a profile picture and give yourself a short description.
The default user handles of the form @something.bsky.social are a bit unwieldy. You can give yourself a much catchier one if you have your own domain. We have already explained how to do this in detail elsewhere.
Perhaps you would like to briefly introduce yourself in a first post (sometimes called skeet at Bluesky)? You don't have to worry as much about the reactions at Bluesky as you do at X, for example. The atmosphere is much friendlier and more helpful. Do you have a question? Post it in the round.
You should specify the language used for each post. This is particularly important if you use Bluesky in several languages. Everyone can specify which languages Bluesky should display (menu Settings/Languages). If you enter an incorrect language, the desired recipients will not see the post.
Your content is generally visible to everyone, including people who are not logged in to Bluesky themselves. You can make it a little less public by toggling the "Visibility for logged out users" switch under Settings/Moderation. The Bluesky website and app will then only show your posts to logged-in users (other Bluesky apps can ignore this setting, however).
Bluesky generally allows you to specify which content the service should display, display only after a warning or block (Settings/Moderation menu). For example, you can have Bluesky block all posts that contain certain words. The moderation function also evaluates labels, for example for sexually explicit or hateful content.
If someone gets on your nerves: Don't respond to him, but mute or block him. This philosophy of not responding to trolls works well for many users on Bluesky. To block or mute someone, go to their profile. You will find the relevant functions in the three-dot menu at the top right under the banner.
Who to follow?
If you are already active on other social networks, you may want to find contacts you are connected to there. Services such as Follow The Sky or the Sky Follower Bridge browser extension can help.
So-called Starter Packs are designed to help Bluesky newcomers find interesting Bluesky users. These are hand-picked lists of users – that you can follow individually or completely. Among other things, our colleague Volker Weber has put together a starter pack with all heise colleagues whose Bluesky account he knows.
There are now more than 45,000 starter packs. In the Bluesky Directory you can look for the titles of all packs in full text. For example, if you search for "German" or "DACH", you will find Starter Packs for German-speaking countries, such as "German politics" or "Authors of German-language literature".
Subscribe to feeds
You can sort the users you follow into lists. Bluesky generates a feed for each list that only contains the posts of the list members. This allows you to neatly separate posts from colleagues and club mates, for example.
What you should definitely try out are feeds. They are a special feature that sets Bluesky apart from other social networks. With Bluesky, you are not subject to the arbitrariness of the operator as to which content is flushed into your timeline. Instead, you have the choice of which algorithm to use for the timeline.
Feeds allow you to keep an eye on content on specific topics much more precisely than lists. It would be almost negligent not to at least try out other feeds in addition to the generic "Discover" – and the chronological following feed.
There are almost 20,000 feeds for academic and professional topics, sports, cities, hobbies and many more. You can search the titles of the feeds on the goodfeeds website. The "Popular With Friends" feed, for example, contains a mix of popular content from accounts you follow and content that your followers like. And "7d German Bangers" contains the most popular German-language posts from the last seven days.
You can even define your own feeds. The best way to do this is with the SkyFeed app –, which we have already explained in detail in another article.
Clients offer more
Many Bluesky interfaces are open to application developers. Therefore, there are already a number of alternative clients for the service. Some of these provide functions that Bluesky's own app does not offer. These include deck.blue, Openvibe, Skeetdeck and Skyfeed. All clients are free of charge. There are free extended versions of deck.blue.
deck.blue, Skeetdeck and Skyfeed are web clients that offer a multi-column view like the formerly popular Twitter client Tweetdeck. All three can also manage multiple accounts. Otherwise, they differ in a number of details.
Skeetdeck, for example, is very slim and loads quickly. You can create several so-called decks with several columns. These can contain posts from your own home timeline, lists, feeds and profiles as well as notifications. The editor contains integrated thread management.
deck.blue is a little fancier than Skeetdeck. You can bookmark individual posts in the app - a shortcoming of Bluesky's own and other clients. If you want to publish posts on a scheduled basis or manage multiple accounts, you have to take out a paid subscription.
Skyfeed is something like the colorful dog among the clients. Its small and colorful user interface takes some getting used to. The service is multi-account capable and supports several workspaces. However, the most important unique selling point is the feed builder, which anyone can use to quickly click together their own feeds.
Openvibe is an app for Android and iOS. In addition to Bluesky, it also supports Mastodon and Nostr - handy for keeping an eye on multiple networks and cross-posting content.
If you try out an external app, you should use a so-called app password (Settings/App passwords). This allows you to give the app an individual password without giving it full access to your account or your Bluesky password.
(jo)