social media The app Bluesky has reached the top of the free download charts for Apple's App Store in the United States, making it more popular than Meta's Threads and OpenAI, at least for the time being. chatgptThe decentralized social media platform has received a fresh influx of users in the past week as more Elon Musk's political ambitions And Give up your social media Platform for an alternative. more than one million new users has joined BlueSky since the 2024 US presidential election on November 5, which was shaped Musk's influence,
First launched as a project within Twitter in 2019, Bluesky had already gained independence from the company Musk's acquisition And after this the name changed. Bluesky also caught the attention of some ex-Tweeters back in 2023When new users were only able to sign up through an invitation system. Now you don't need a code to join, and anyone can sign up. Are you interested in trying Bluesky? Here's some advice for creating an account, figuring out who to follow, and keeping your new home clean.
get started
Social media platforms available in your browser bsky.app or through a mobile app (Android, iOSI'm still figuring it out, but I know that Bluesky will give you an almost overwhelming amount of options when you sign up, such as the option to host your own server. This is good, and it keeps the platform intact decentralizationBut if you're just looking for online sports scores and nonsense posts then it's probably a lot more involved than you want.
As soon as you're creating an account, you'll probably want to leave it Bluesky Social As your hosting provider, because that's what most people use. Next, enter your email address, create a strong password, and enter your date of birth to verify that you're on Minimum age 13 yearsNext, you will need to come up with some intelligent user handles. Keep in mind that the full name will be expanded to @examplehandle.bsky.social. Continue setting up your profile by filling out your bio and uploading a photo or creating an avatar.
Before we start following anyone, go ahead and open up settings to turn on the toggle for two-factor authenticationDue to which your account will remain more secure. Next, click on Control Tab to add any words you want to mute. Here you can also choose whether you want to see or block any adult content in your feed.
Find People to Follow
One of the highlights of the platform is the freedom of choice you get when deciding what you want to watch. are the first discover And next Feed, which should be familiar to X users. Respectively, they show you an algorithmically generated feed of popular posts and a reverse-chronological feed of posts from people you follow. As a new user, you'll immediately see a list of popular accounts to follow.
You can also curate your own shareable lists of users to follow, or choose to follow lists of feeds curated by other BlueSky users. Following one of these curated lists – called Starter Packs – is a great way to follow large groups of accounts together based on a niche or specific interest.
For example, wired Put together a starter pack For readers to easily follow our journalists and staff members on the platform. you can visit this web page For a searchable database of all available starter packs. Starter packs are available for heavy metal band, gardening, science fiction writer, Bizarre Transit NerdAnd many more. All this makes it easy to connect with communities of people with shared interests.
manage flow
Navigating back to the Home tab, discover The feed of posts will look familiar at first glance to anyone who has been on Twitter this decade. The look, layout and even the mechanics are mostly the same. Tap the heart to like a post, press the two arrows to repost to your followers, or click the small chat bubble to reply to a post. It's worth noting that your likes are public on BlueSky and anyone can see it. ,Looking at you, Ted Cruz,
Going further into your Settings, you may want to open chat settings To make some adjustments to the way direct messages work in BlueSky. The standard setting is to only receive direct messages from users you follow. You can open this setting to receive messages from anyone on the platform if you prefer, or you can turn off DMs altogether if you want to be left alone.
While you're making changes to your new account settings, might I also suggest opening this Accessibility Settings And choose the option to require alt text descriptions on images before your posts. Alt text is important to help users who are blind or have low vision understand what's in an image, and it's an essential tool to help everyone navigate and enjoy BlueSky. This setting will serve as a solid reminder to take a few seconds and add some descriptive text to any visual media posts on the platform.