I’ve seen way less interaction from bot accounts. It was really bad just a few months ago. This is the only social network where I’ve had to lock down messaging, it was just that intolerable. The BlueSky team mentioned that they were putting protections in place, and today’s traffic is more “honest”
i mean yea, it _is_ all elon driven user acquisition. none of us (the less than 20 engineers at bluesky) were ready for the massive growing pains that caused. feature development has been on hold for like 6 months now as a result.
that's changing though finally, and we're going to start seeing actually meaningful features and stuff ship. but i think the thing to remember is we probably were never even supposed to have those users that are leaving
e.g. i joined bluesky as an application dev. i have not written more than maybe 100 lines of react in about 6 months though as a result of everything that has happened lol
well i mean it's happened multiple times now. you also have to remember that this site, unlike pretty much any other, went through roughly ten days of 1 million new users per day solely because of the actions of another site (or rather, a guy)
there's definitely a chance to retain them and they're also to some degree churning for a reason. one of them funny exponentials that has a growth and decay term where increments matter a lot on longer runs
true! i think the big things are:
- bad interactions
- no feature development because of small team size/repositioning to handle huge influx
- missing features from the Other Site
- general social media burnout
2 and 3 are going to be changing here starting this quarter. #1 is just...yea. and
Seems like election bump. And I would guess all platforms are down a bit. Social media is overwhelming, especially when we have to get through 4 years minimum of constant spewing of bs.
There was a huge exogenous post-election user explosion. Seems like we’re now in the shake-out period. How many of those users are going to stick around long enough to start sustainable conversations about, I dunno, gardening and/or Wrestlemania?
If 20% stay and then uptick restarts, that’s good?
Umm, this, but unironically and non-sarcastically? The NYT has probably lost more subscribers in the past year than BlueSky has daily active users, so you’d think they would want a place to gripe about why
This is breaking my brain and making me sad. I clearly live in a bubble of people who used to subscribe to the NYT and have canceled recently. Who on earth are all these new subscribers?
I mean, I think the drop off is reasonable considering the sharp increase in users and how they were obtained originally. It goes without saying they need to address retention and engagement, but a drop-off in users was expected, no?
Imo it's a lot because the discovery feed is over-tuned and the site is under-moderated. If I go on discovery I want a (relatively) unfiltered view of what is going on but I often only see people I follow. Also nuclear block is not a substitute for banning serial harassers on here
The spam problem is probably the next biggest issue, less because of its ubiquity (I've been seeing less of it, I think) and more because it makes new users think this site is mostly just spam bots
33 million users
may grow
might not
Input valid
What we invest in our input which drives others listen
X formerly Twitter now has 9 million users
Per platform data
Elon creates fake users to bolster values
How many of those 9 million are actual people
Liars love lying
Blue Sky
Value = Input
On the one hand, I don't know that any massive text-based social-media platform was ever going to be fun: every post runs a huge risk of getting yelled at by ppl who misunderstand the context. On the other hand.... there's nowhere else left to go!
I mean, this site also just sucks for engagement. It's so rare to see an unknown account begin to grow. I never see unknowns go viral. No exposure, no likes, no follows, nothing.
This is very very true. Even for most of us who don’t care about growing our accounts, there’s just no interaction if you’re not a bigger account. It seems like a closed circle of people who “got here first” or whatever who engage with and amplify each other, and nobody else
Yeah, I don’t care about growing my account at all. Just wanna follow interesting people & have a communal experience. Haven’t found it yet. Trying to remain hopeful, though I’m pretty checked out currently. So far I feel like I need to join 50 different FB style groups to get the right mix but,
then it feels like those folks are all serious hobbyists/professionals. And, while the content is very informative & appreciated, it’s not really the place to engage. I just think maybe my people aren’t here. Dunno.
I’m with ya. I’ll keep reading here if nothing else, for all my favorite law/election/politics from Twitter but mostly given up on the communal aspect of it
idk some of my posts got decently popular (mainly cause i said something controversial and got quote tweeted like 50 times) and i had only a couple hundred at the time
That’s what made twitter interesting for me. Engagement here for me has been bizarre. Trying to converse/banter with a new person/account is like dicey b/c, a lot of ppl act like they’re on a closed platform. I *never* had that issue on twitter. I wanna see the unknowns!
Wonder how much of it is the Discover feed just not being very good. So rare I find a good post from someone I'm not already following. I doubt it's because I already follow all of the good posts
People say they hate an algo a) when the algo is often wrong or b) when it is proven to be manipulating *others*. But the latter is a very conscious hate
When it works? By far the most people wouldn't want it any other way
Comments
Nobody wanted to talk about that when we were all trying to populate an alternative space to Twitter.
on the other, it’s the same graph that essentially every social media site goes through.
1) see churn flatten out over time (possibly true here but hard to see without cohorts broken out)
2) can repeatably acquire users over time
re: 2, all I can see in these charts is Elon Event-driven user acquisition
- bad interactions
- no feature development because of small team size/repositioning to handle huge influx
- missing features from the Other Site
- general social media burnout
2 and 3 are going to be changing here starting this quarter. #1 is just...yea. and
If 20% stay and then uptick restarts, that’s good?
may grow
might not
Input valid
What we invest in our input which drives others listen
X formerly Twitter now has 9 million users
Per platform data
Elon creates fake users to bolster values
How many of those 9 million are actual people
Liars love lying
Blue Sky
Value = Input
When it works? By far the most people wouldn't want it any other way