Bluesky Report – #117
Bluesky begins rolling out support for livestreaming on other platforms, Leaflet is a blogging and publishing platform that has added ATProto integration, easier bridging between ATProto and other protocols, and a whole lot more.
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The News
Bluesky is starting to roll out a new feature where people can add their Twitch and YouTube livestreams to their account, and the Bluesky app will display an indicator on your profile that you are live. Bluesky is rolling out the feature slowly, with only a select few accounts being able to go live so far. It is mainly focused on sports communities so far, with the NBA being one of the first partners. Bluesky is taking it slow with this feature, CTO Paul Frazee said that major effort is in verifying if the linked account on the streaming platform is the same person as the Bluesky account. Another concern is moderation, Bluesky is only linking to Twitch and YouTube, as these are platforms with a well-established moderation infrastructure. For example Bluesky wants ATProto streaming platform Streamplace to have solid moderation in place before it is considered to be added as a potential source of livestreams. Similar to how Bluesky has rolled out verification, some core pieces of how going live works as only accessible on ATProto, and available for others to use. Bluesky client TOKIMEKI already added the ability for any user to go live. However, same as with verification, this is only visible to other people who also use TOKIMEKI. The real impact of a livestreaming integration will likely come when the feature becomes more widely available, but for now it is already a good demonstration of Bluesky’s willingness to send traffic outside of their app. While Big Tech platforms are taking greater and greater efforts to stop people from leaving their app, Bluesky is taking the opposite approach, by adding features which make people switch to another app.
Leaflet is a publishing platform where anyone can easily create and publish their own documents, posts and pages. These documents can be shared as simple web pages, with a lot of features for customisation. Leaflet’s latest update is Leaflet Publications, which adds ATProto integration. They describe the update as Leaflet becoming as a social publishing platform. With the update, you can now create a ‘publication’, which is a collection of documents and posts. For this you log into Leaflet with your ATProto (Bluesky) account, so that the data is stored on ATProto on your PDS. This makes Leaflet an ATProto blogging platform similar to WhiteWind. Future plans include for more social integration, such as subscribing, commenting, following and more. The organisation says that the key goals is to build social publishing, and to support creators, with paid subscriptions being “a high priority and on our roadmap”.
A New Social, the organisation behind Bridgy Fed, has launched a dedicated page to for people to manage their account bridging. Bridgy Fed is a piece of software that allows people to ‘bridge’ their account across multiple protocols. This allows people on Mastodon (using the ActivityPub protocol) to interact with people on Bluesky (using AT Protocol). For this, people need to manually opt-in their accounts to be bridged to other networks (largely due to cultural reasons from the fediverse communities). Up until now, doing so was a fairly confusing process that involved manually following other accounts. With the new update, people can log in to Bridgy Fed with the account they want to bridge, and simply turn it on or off. It also has an easier option to update the handles for Mastodon accounts that are bridged to Bluesky: for example, by default my Mastodon account on Bluesky can be found at @laurenshof.indieweb.social.ap.brid.gy, which is a fairly cumbersome handle, to put it mildly. At the settings page I can now change it to any handle I want, similar to how any Bluesky account can change their handle. A New Social is also launching a Patreon as they are working towards financial sustainability, with plans to launch merch soon as well.
Custom feed builder Graze has released an integration with Patreon. This integration gives feed creators two new options. Feed creators can now give members of their Patreon the ability to see their custom feeds without sponsored content. They can also limit access to their custom feed to only members of their Patreon. Custom feeds present a large amount of new design space to explore, and they can be used for a wide variety of purposes. One of those is using custom feeds as a form of community, as Blacksky is doing, for example. Restricting access to a a custom feed to only members of a Patreon is another step in the direction of ‘feeds as communities’.
Grain Social is a new photo sharing app build on ATProto. The app is for creating and sharing galleries of photos. The app uses it’s own lexicon, giving people a space to upload and share photos that do not automatically end up on Bluesky. The app has some simple features right now: a timeline that shows all the galleries and photo’s that are created on the platform, and the ability for people to upload photos and create galleries.
Germ Network is an end-2-end encrypted (E2EE) messaging app that is currently in development. The app has announced that they are working on ATProto integration, where people can use Germ Network with their ATProto account. The actual E2EE messaging happens off-protocol. Germ Network says that they are hoping for a common on-protocol implementation in the future, where Germ Network and other ATProto messaging apps can interoperate. A thread by Germ Network CEO Tessa Brown also illustrates why platforms are interested in integrating with ATProto: getting a new social platform off the ground without an existing social graph is incredibly hard. ATProto provides the possibility for other platforms to tap into an existing social graph. This observation is not new, Bluesky PBC has been explicit that this is one of the advantages and design goals of ATProto. We are now starting to see this play out, with new apps that are starting to come out that use ATProto to bootstrap a social graph.
The developers for Bluesky client Flashes said they are working on the concept of a PDS that runs on mobile phones. The Flashes developers are interested in working together with others on this, and have started a Working Group where they have shared their proposed design.
One of the core ideas of ATProto is that the network is effectively one giant pool of data, where a variety of apps and tools can access the same data and process and present that data in a way that fits them best. A Bluesky post can be viewed in the Bluesky Social app for regular doomscrollingmicroblogging, but the same post can also be opened in a PDS browser tool like PDSls or atp.tools, viewed in Skythread for a threading view, or more. Switching between apps to view the same post in different context is quite cumbersome. at://wormhole is a tool to make this easier, it is an Apple Shortcut that allows easy switching between apps. You can view the same content, using the different context that each app provides. As the ecosystem develops, I’m expecting to see more experimentation and development in this direction.
Two new ATProto meetups by community members: in Nashville, USA, on June 1st, and in London, UK, on June 19th.
Software and Platform Updates
- An update for moderation software Ozone (it can now display, issue, and revoke, verification) as well as a new proposal by Bluesky PBC to expand the set of reporting reasons available to users and labelers.
- Streamplace has launched a new tool for OAuth, OATProxy, which helps prevent users being logged out of their apps every few days.
- Streamplace redesigned the homepage, and made their first hire after their funding round.
- Popsky is a media review app on ATProto, and the app is now available for testing on Android as well as iOS. Popsky also supports Goodreads imports now.
- BookHive is another media review platform that added support for Goodreads imports this week.
- Jetrelay is a custom designed relay that is intended to serve a large number of clients with high efficiency.
In the Media
Wired has an extensive interview with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, and Graber answers a wide variety of questions on the network. Some quotes that stood out to me:
- Graber says that Bluesky is great at sending traffic to news organisations. Wired themselves confirm this, saying that “The platform has become a top traffic driver and source of new subscribers“. Washington Times reporter Drew Harwell also agrees that Bluesky has become a great drive of referral traffic.
- Wired boils down questions of moderation to its core, by asking: “Would you welcome President Trump?” Graber is clear that Bluesky will, saying: “Yeah—Bluesky’s for everyone, and we think that over time, the broader public conversation needs to be on an open protocol. That lets people choose their own moderation preferences. We think that it’s flexible enough to serve every use case and everyone.” The follow-up questions on how Graber relates this to free speech being under thread is worth reading as well.
- On growing the team: “In November, during our growth spurt, we were around 20. Now we’re at 25, and we’ll probably pass 30 soon. We’re growing at a pace that’s sustainable to us.”
- Graber talks about an upcoming ‘communities’ feature that’s scheduled for the end of the year: “A lot of people don’t realize that Bluesky is a bit like Reddit and Twitter at the same time, because you can build feeds that are essentially communities—the science feed is run by scientists, is moderated by scientists, and has its own rules.” The ability to build custom feeds is also planned to come to within the Bluesky app.
- On making money, Graber reiterates the current plans: “Subscriptions are coming soon. The next steps are to look into what marketplaces can span these different applications.”
And some more media coverage:
- Architecting a New Era of Community, with Blacksky’s Rudy Fraser – Mike McCue/ Dot Social podcast
- Will Bluesky be able to rival X or Twitter? – BBC News
The Links
Some interesting and fun experiments in building on ATProto that caught my eye this week:
- A tool to scan your timeline and see how how much every account you follow contributes to your feed. Gives good insight in how dominant the loudest voices can be on your timeline, compared to the Quiet Posters.
- Anyone can change this account’s avatar with a special tool.
- An upcoming game to view art posted on Bluesky in a a 3D art gallery.
- Compare hoses (lol)
- An Apple shortcut to quickly post to ATProto without opening an app.
- Sure why not make your browsing history publicly available on ATProto.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! If you want more analysis, you can subscribe to my newsletter. Every week you get an update with all this week’s articles, as well as extra analysis not published anywhere else. You can subscribe below, and follow this blog @fediversereport.com and my personal account @laurenshof.online on Bluesky.