Author’s Note: I’ve been meaning to start back blogging for a while now, and seeing some of the convo today led me to write this. I promise most posts won’t be this dry or cerebral.
Someone on BlueSky said recently “Of course things aren’t different here [from Twitter]. This is a platform, not a community.”
While this is true, the structure of a platform has a lot to do with the communities that form on it. The platform formerly known as Facebook knew this well, and built their groupware to encourage the formation of communities there. They allowed groups to be private, categorized around brands, missions, or identities, provided granular permission levels, and offered group chat and group activities/events as part of the core offering.
BlueSky is an interesting case study in that it has become the de facto home of a number of marginalized communities from other platforms, without any of the tools that made managing those communities possible. This has resulted in two (probably unexpected) side effects:
- There is a greater tendency to parasocially bond over perceived similarities in cause or identity.
- Interpersonal conflicts tend to spill out into site wide conversations, drawing in people who would normally not be a part of them if not part of the specific group in question.
Were features in place that allowed for private in-group conversations, both of these effects would be limited to the groups themselves. Some might argue that the former effect is a positive while the latter is a negative, but many of the smaller conflicts that have risen on the platform have occurred due to overly familiar responses to posts.
Still, this is something that BlueSky’s team should be paying close attention to. With the promise of a “List” feature coming soon that has many of the basic group building elements, conversation may become more tightly aligned within the various groups that form, which will likely improve the “main” feed for everyone.
BlueSky also has some “big fish in a small pond” problems. Because the total site population is still relatively small (a few hundred thousand), and discoverability limited (no easy path to importing contacts from other platforms), there is a tendency to follow anyone you see active, meaning the barrier to “virality” is lower than on some other platforms. Some folks who have never had much of an audience previously now find themselves with several thousand followers, which seems notable to them.
This has led to a few very visible flameouts as some posters with an inflated sense of self importance have centered themselves in “high profile” conflicts on the site, and eventually been dogpiled for that behavior.
This is another area where reasonable group controls would limit the impact. Searching for groups would give new users an easy way to find folks with similar interests to follow and engage with, setting the bar higher for follower building, and reset the “easy mode” audience building that has been the norm since the platform launched. It would also limit the “flameout” aspect as users would have the ability to retreat from groups without leaving the platform entirely.
There’s a lot to love about the platform; the chronological feed is a nice change of pace from the algorithmically promoted rage bait so common on other platforms, and I’ve already met a number of folks I’m happy to call friends. I’m looking forward to a number of upcoming features that are being teased, including the ability to federate instances. And I think it has the potential to be the place to come build communities for folks that haven’t found other platforms welcoming.
That being said, I’m trying to avoid getting high off that new platform smell in the meantime.