Bluesky is making social media fun again, and that’s a good thing. For example, you have people developing creative new apps that show Bluesky skeets (posts) like the digital rain in the Matrix or firehose effect or a nightsky. All very cool.

It has some asking: is Bluesky the new Twitter and is that a good thing? Right now I would answer Yes to both parts of that question.

One thing for sure, people are paying attention and piling on. As the New York Times noted, Elon Musk and his swing to the right had much to do with people fleeing Twitter (ok, X.com).

What’s odd is that they are mostly going to Bluesky. After all, Bluesky is not the only game in town: Threads still exists. However Bluesky is rolling out features that are making Threads and X users want to move the butterfly app. And Threads has noticed and has started making changes. (While also trying to deal with their engagement bait problem.)

Will the changes at Threads be enough to keep Bluesky from surging to the lead? We will have to wait and see. Meanwhile I am interested in learning more about Bluesky and how I can experiment with it. If you feel the same, check out their documentation and read about the AT protocol.

Not everything about social media is fun and good. Over on X.com you have Elon making nazi jokes and spreading election conspiracies. Maybe he should spend less time doing that and more time on  X.com’s technical problems. I’ll leave Ed Zitron have the last word on Elon Musk (he has several words, and they are all rightly scathing). While over on visual social media, we have TikTok users spreading misinformation on melanoma. And famed YouTuber MrBeast being sued over ‘unsafe’ environment on upcoming Amazon reality show. Not good and all.

I once believed that new developments in social media were over. But the growth of Bluesky has convinced me otherwise. I’ll be curious to see how it grows over the next few years. Hopefully people like Musk and other fans of Trump (ahem, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz) stay away.