It’s becoming bluesy a major world attraction market of social networks specialized in microblogging sites. Its rise has been meteoric as it has attracted millions of users who have fled X in horror due to its owner Elon Musk’s administration and critics’ belief that the old Twitter will never return because today it is “toxic media platform.”

Although there are other alternatives to X and there we have to highlight Mastodon as the most open, decentralized and independent platform out there, Bluesky is friendlier and perhaps more similar It is no coincidence that she was born in the same heart of Twitter when its CEO Jack Dorsey and other executives investigated “decentralized social network protocol”where multiple social networks would interact with each other through an open standard.

It eventually became independent from the parent company and although only part of the originally promised decentralized network protocol is implemented, it has features that make it more attractive than Mastodon. Or Threads, another alternative that has also gained millions of users, although it does so through its integration with Instagram and the matrix of both, Meta. And aside from Elon Musk turning X into his political springboard, Threads isn’t immune to some of its evils, and it’s worth recalling Facebook’s data excesses here.

As with any social network, the success of each of them depends only on the number of followers. The difficulty of moving users is known, but the situation requires at least their testing. Mastodon and Bluesky are currently and at this moment‘more hygienic’ in all areas. It depends on you.

We start with Bluesky

If you’re a Twitter (or X) user, there’s very little to tell you, but we wanted to take a look at Bluesky first for users who were less used to dedicated microblogging sites. You won’t have the slightest trouble.

Anyone over the age of 13 can join Bluesky right now, as long as it is legal in the country where it is installed, this is understandable, as we have already seen the case of Australia and the future ban on the use of social networks for minors under the age of 16. Although initially the service operated on the basis of invitations to the beta phase, which lasted a year, today with a stable version Its access is free and open to everyone.

The network is available via the web and for iOS and Android mobile platforms. To register, you can access the bsky.app portal from any browser or install mobile applications on mobile phones or tablets from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.

To create an account, click the “Sign Up” button on the website or the “Create Account” button in the Apps. You will need to select your “hosting provider” (currently the only option is Bluesky Social) and provide your email address, password and date of birth.

Next, you’ll need to choose a Bluesky “username” or account name, which must be at least three characters long and use only letters, numbers, and hyphens.

The end result will be something like this verycomputer.bsky.social. Let’s say if you have your own website, you can use a domain as your username. Once you’ve set up your account, you’ll need to fill out a captcha to prove you’re human, and then you’ll have the option to upload a profile photo or create an avatar from around twenty emoji and six background colors.

Publishing on Bluesky

You can use special mobile applications or a web browser to post on the social network. Once you hit the new post button, you’ll see that you can add up to 300 characters to post and attach photos, videos, gifs or emoticons. There is another button called “Anyone can interact” and you need to select it to adjust the post interaction or in other words to customize your audience. This allows you to choose whether you want people to quote your post, limit replies to your followers, mention accounts, or disable replies altogether. It is a powerful network with a measure, as we will detail later.

The above is the basis for posting, but if you want your posts to be accessible to users with low vision, you can use alt text. It’s a separate text box that you can use to describe the images you’ve attached, and it’s a good idea to add whenever you’re sharing media alongside a post. In the post draft, simply look for the “+ALT” icon in the upper left corner and type (alt text does not affect the character count of your post).

Accounts to follow

In your first steps with Bluesky, your main “Follow” feed will consist only of the official Bluesky account, and your “Discover” feed (similar to “For You” in X) will consist of posts related to any interests you’ve selected. during the configuration process. There are 22 themes available by default, including art, movies, sports or technology.

Of course, there are more accurate methods find accounts that match your interests and want to follow. Channel surfing is one way. Discover to see if any of the accounts have posted content you like and then follow them directly. For example, you can explore the 500 most popular accounts on the web and see if one suits your needs. Directly search for specific people like friends, brands, celebrities, etc.

Once you’ve found a few accounts you want to follow, check to see if any of them are offering it Bluesky Starter Packs. These packages are a exclusive feature of this networkwhich may include recommended accounts and custom feeds to follow. You can follow these accounts one by one, or if you find the whole group interesting, click the “Follow all” button. You can manage your tracking at any time.

Own channels

When you start using Bluesky, the service will ask you what topics you are interested in and the first feed what you see in the app depends on it. If you want to use it as your main option, you can like some posts to train the algorithm. Your feed will be edited to reflect your tastes, but with just 10 responses, your opinion will be completely spot on.

Of course, it is more useful and fun to choose your own interests. Click the # button at the top of the site, go to Resources and select the ones you like the most. And personalized feeds are one of Bluesky’s most exciting features, with over 50,000 currently active on the service. Think of custom feeds as social media algorithms of your own choosing or design.

Once you’ve subscribed to some of them, they’ll appear in separate tabs at the top of your home page. You can go there and change their order and set the preferred one as default. It’s one of the big news and advantages over others like X or Threads, and rightly so Bluesky doesn’t force you to use the algorithm feed as the default option. And if you’re a software developer (or want to learn how to code), you can create your own channels to share with anyone on Bluesky.

Migrating servers and data from X

The main problem with any new social network you start out in is that you don’t have or can’t find family, friends or colleagues. There are several apps that can and do help move your posts and followers from X to Bluesky.

If you are looking for followers you can use Sky Follower Bridge to easily find those who were on X (and people you followed) on Bluesky. There are some restrictions, but if the person uses the same username or has included their Bluesky username in their Twitter bio, you can follow them. As for content, you can use a Chrome extension called to move old posts from X to Bluesky Oporto. Although this will exclude retweets or quoted tweets, it will import most tweets.

Avoid trolls and moderate

Another of the most important steps to take in your account is to see the dump that other networks generally become, and which has forced many of us to seek peace outside of them. Bluesky has built-in powerful moderation tools and you should use them to minimize toxicity. Allows you to create shareable account lists and the like you can easily mute or block. To create these lists, go to Bluesky Settings > Moderation > Moderation Lists. Alternatively, you can review selected lists such as the anti-NFT/cryptocurrency list, policies, content collectors, etc. and block or mute them at your discretion.

Content is also important adaptability audience (in our opinion, the best in its field), both in who sees your message and in the responses. Click the three dots button below the post and select Break Quote to remove the quoted part. Your post will disappear from that person’s post and their comment will disappear from your wall. This allows some control over who cites your publication. And you also have the option to completely disable meetings for each of them.

The moderation tools They also include the possibility to hide any words or hashtag from your feed, which is standard for most social networks, but you can also enable them for your followers while muting them in other parts of the app. There is also an advanced settings menu within your moderation settings where you can choose which types of sensitive content you want to see, receive notifications about, or hide completely. This whole section is really powerful and worth investing time in managing.

Finally, to state the obvious: no one can guarantee that some of X’s problems won’t also reach Bluesky. And we are talking about the problems of moderation in the face of so much fraud, misinformation, targeted messages or hate, not to mention the use of data for entertainment by large generative artificial intelligence models. At the moment we see it as “cleaner” and “neutral” than X. Which is progress. Try it, find your friends or invite them to take their own tests. We insist that the success (or not) of social networks depends only on the number of their users. It depends on you.