5 reasons to try Twitter rival Bluesky

In the wake of Twitter’s ongoing turmoil, several social networks have popped up to offer people an alternative to the Elon Musk-owned platform. One such network is Bluesky, or Bluesky Social, to be precise. Kicked off by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey in 2019, Bluesky looks and works like Twitter but avoids the baggage that Musk has brought to the table.

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Other social networks trying to grab a piece of the pie include Mastodon and Meta’s Threads. Of those two, Mastodon hasn’t quite caught on yet, likely due in part to its complicated sign-up process and multi-server environment. Threads scooped up tens of millions of users soon after launch but has seen those numbers drop as it strives to resolve key limitations and add new features.

Bluesky does lack some of the more advanced options offered by Twitter (e.g., direct messages). Plus, its user population is still small compared with other platforms. But it presents a clean and friendly interface with most of the basic features you’d want in a social network. And people already familiar with Twitter will find it a friendly environment.

The biggest hurdle with Bluesky is simply hopping on board. As the service is still in beta mode, access is available only by invitation, and those invites are in short supply. But if you do manage to snag an invite code, Bluesky offers certain benefits over Twitter, Threads, and other social networks. Here are five reasons to consider joining.

1. You can use the app or website

Bluesky is accessible as both a mobile app and a website, so you can read and write posts via your PC or your mobile device. That stands in contrast to Meta’s Threads, where you can read but not create posts on the website, forcing you to turn to the mobile app whenever you want to post something. And even reading posts on the Threads site is a clumsy process as you can view only one account at a time by manually adding the username to the Threads URL.

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Designed for iOS and Android, Bluesky’s mobile app is well designed with quick access to your feed, search options, notifications, and profile. The Bluesky website is equally capable, with all the major features and options easily accessible. In the mobile app, you can even swipe to the right to display the same menu that appears on the website. Since the app and website look and feel the same, switching between them is smooth and easy.

2. Comprehensive search

The search tool in Bluesky can find both accounts and posts. This is another distinction from Threads, which currently lets you search only for accounts. In the Bluesky app or website, select the Search option and type your search term. From the results, you can bounce between posts and users depending on what you want to see.

3. Easy content filtering

Don’t want to be subjected to certain types of content? That’s easy enough to accomplish in Bluesky both on the website and in the app, though the website gives you more control to make changes.

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On the website, select the Moderation category. In the app, swipe to the right and then select Moderation. Select Content Filtering and you can choose to hide, warn, or show explicit sexual images or nudity, sexually suggestive content, violent content, hate group images, spam, and impersonated accounts.

Twitter and Threads offer their own content filtering capabilities, but Bluesky’s process is more precise and helpful.

4. Control your feed

To help you see the accounts you follow and find new ones, Bluesky provides three different feeds — Following, What’s Hot, and Popular with Friends. The Following feed shows you posts only from the accounts you follow. The What’s Hot feed displays the latest hot posts. And the Popular with Friends feed shows you posts popular among the accounts you follow.

You’re even able to find other feeds. Go to the My Feeds section and select the gear icon. Swipe down to see a few more feeds and then select the Pin icon to pin it to your main feeds page. Select the option for Discover new feeds to view even more feeds created by other users based on certain algorithms. Select one of these feeds and you can pin it or like it.

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In contrast, Twitter offers a feed called For You with tweets it thinks you’ll like. There is a Following feed to display tweets only from the accounts you follow, but Twitter has a nasty habit of switching your default option to the For You feed. The main feed in Threads shows posts for accounts you follow as well as those from random accounts, so it’s less useful than the feeds in Bluesky.

5. Custom domains

By default, your username in Bluesky takes on the domain name of bsky.social, as in lancewhit.bsky.social. But if you already own a domain name, you can use that instead. By turning to your own domain name, you can customize and verify your identity on Bluesky and tie it into an existing website.

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Don’t own a domain? No problem. Purchase one directly through Bluesky via the company’s partnership with Namecheap, a domain registrar known for preventing unauthorized domain transfers and protecting domain names. Setting up a domain name this way offers several benefits, including increased privacy in the WHOIS directory, URL forwarding, and email forwarding. To learn more, check out Bluesky’s blog post on “Purchase and Manage Domains Directly Through Bluesky.”