Blue Skies

The early days of the internet were a lot more fun. People took themselves less seriously. They formed organically around their interests and passions in forums and IRC rooms. They made websites and blogs, and there was a lot less pressure to “productionize” your online persona. It was more authentic.

Now the internet is about metrics and engagement. What drives the most views? How can I make the most money? How do we get people to use our apps as long as possible so we can claim growth in our quarterly revenue guidance? This isn’t fun, and the people and communities who are having fun are a lot harder to find.

Bluesky feels like a move back to what made the internet amazing. It’s not about engagement, it’s about authenticity and community building. Bluesky’s algorithms exist to help you find the things that are important to you, not trick you into getting sucked into circles of hatred. People just post what they want to post instead of trying to optimize for engagement. They’re forming small communities and doing little web experiments with the open data.

Open data and user-owned data is also really compelling, but we’ll have to see how that shakes out and if people build composable applications outside of just Bluesky.

I’m enjoying Bluesky for many of the same reasons I enjoyed the early internet. Eventually Bluesky will need to make money, as will anybody building on atproto, so hopefully they don’t succumb to the same issues that other social companies have.