Visual for: Diving into the Atmosphere
/diving-into-the-atmosphere

Diving into the Atmosphere

November 18th, 2024
· 7 min read ·
AT Protocol
Social Web

These past few days, Bluesky really seemed to start getting traction and starting to hit mainstream appeal – adding over 1 Million people per day. With people I know joining left and right, I also gave it a shot. Here are my initial impressions about the network and the AT protocol behind it.

The cool stuff

Identity is the most important thing

On the web, the domain of your personal website is kinda like your identity. It’s unique, it’s recognizable, it’s not tied to any social network. On the AT protocol (and therefore on Bluesky), you can set your domain to be your handle. What a great idea! No more hoping that your username is available, you are now just @yourdomain.tld1.

This already sounded promising, but then, I also read about how you can host your data yourself and essentially own your social graph. This means that, in theory, you could just leave Bluesky altogether but still take your data with you to another service. Granted, there don’t really exist such services yet2, but I’m fairly positive, that they will eventually. Or at least multiple instances of Bluesky.

User-centric

Bluesky really gives you control over your experience, unlike any other social network I’ve used in the past. The two most notable examples are:

  • Custom feeds/algorithms3, just pick and choose the ones that fit your needs
  • Custom moderation services and blocklists to make Bluesky a more friendly place

Global discovery

This one is huge, especially when coming from Mastodon. If you’re looking for someone, you’ll actually find them (if they are on the network). And likes, replies etc. are also always available, not just the ones that your server knows about.

Simple to get started, many possibilities for advanced users

The sign-up process feels like (almost) any other social network and is fairly straightforward. This is certainly a good thing, as it helps Bluesky with onboarding a non-tech audience. The starter packs are also a great idea for getting up to speed quickly and finding your people4.

But for devs, Bluesky also provides plenty of opportunities to build things on top of their API and the AT protocol. And, you won’t believe it, the API is actually free (looking at you, X 🙄).

Comparison to the Fediverse

I am by no means a technical expert when it comes to ActivityPub (the protocol powering the Fediverse/Mastodon) and the AT Protocol. But upon an initial inspection, I feel the AT Protocol is more suited for social networks.

The Fediverse is really server-centric: You have to choose one when you sign up, it becomes part of your identity/username, it influences what you can see on the network (because of which other servers federate with yours and/or are blocked by your admin). Sure, you can technically switch servers, but this changes your username and requires your old server to permanently redirect your old account, which doesn’t seem like the most ideal solution.

On a protocol level, I also heard this comparison, which made quite a lot of sense: On ActivityPub, everything is social media. Your blogposts, videos, microblogs, images, whatever format you can think of. Everything is interconnected, can be viewed across networks and in different clients.

Whereas, the AT Protocol provides an ecosystem for a new Social Web that is more open than Web 2.0 and exists alongside the regular web. I like this approach more, to be honest. If I want to consume long form content, I open my RSS reader (web), if I want to consume short updates and talk to others, I open Bluesky (social media).

In short, Mastodon feels more like a niche forum. I still love it, especially for web related topics and the IndieWeb scene on there. But Bluesky is way more diverse, has more people with different interests and this is, ultimately, what makes such networks truly feel “social”.

Both approaches are interesting and frankly, if either of them succeeded and became the new standard for communication on the web, I’d be pleased. But if I had to choose, I would go with the AT protocol.

Where to go from here

Bluesky and the AT Protocol are by no means perfect yet and maybe, we are all a bit in our honeymoon phase right now. However, after reading about it the past few days, taking a look at the docs, listening to a lot of podcasts, I truly feel like AT has a shot at becoming the standard for future generations of social networks.

On a more personal level, seeing the Bluesky team communicating just gives me a good hunch about this whole thing. I encourage you to especially listen to what Jay Graber, the CEO, has to say about the project and her vision for the future of the Social Web. I’ll link a few podcasts below.

All of that said, I still believe that the best thing you can do on the web is having your own personal website. Social media should be an extension to your online presence, not be your online presence. At least that’s my opinion.

That’s why you’ll still mainly find my content here on this website. But you can now also find me on Bluesky as well as on Mastodon5. Or write me an email, that’s still the best and most personal medium for getting in touch online :)

Further reading

If you’re interested, here are some links that I found helpful in wrapping my head around the AT protocol and Bluesky:

And here is an earlier post of mine where I talked more in-depth about the Fediverse.

Tools

Footnotes

  1. Or, in my case, @dominikhofer.me :) ↩

  2. Apart from a blogging platform called WhiteWind I know of. ↩

  3. Here is one I created for discovering posts from around the IndieWeb. ↩

  4. I created a starter pack full of great people from the design/code space, if you’re interested in that kind of content as well. ↩

  5. Although I might check that one less often know, as I don’t want to handle multiple social networks. ↩

What are your thoughts on this post?

I’d love to hear from you! Please write me an email by clicking this link (I reply to every email I receive!).

If you're on Mastodon, interact with this post and your reaction will appear below after some time.

Public reactions to this post