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FEATURE
Up, Up, and Away: Exploring Bluesky for Libraries
by David Lee King
| Did you enjoy using Twitter/X back in its heyday? Did short-form microblogging tools help your library connect with your community? If so, you might consider exploring Bluesky. |
I started using Twitter (now X) in March 2007, and I used it most days for a good 10–12 years. In my opinion, those early years were the best time on Twitter. In our library and information industry, a solid group of library professionals used it to share information, discuss ideas about the industry, share critiques of each other’s blog posts, and offer helpful library-related thoughts. In those days, Twitter was a useful tool for immediate conversation and feedback.
Fast-forward to today, and Twitter/X has gone through a lot of changes, both in ownership and in functionality. Those changes have made people start to reconsider their use of Twitter/X and, in some cases, decide to delete/deactivate their accounts. Although many people are moving away from Twitter/X, they also still like the immediacy of a microblogging platform with short-form, text-based social media posts. Thankfully, a few new social media microblogging services have launched. Bluesky, for example, has made a huge splash in the social media world, and it is continuing to grow quickly.
What Is Bluesky?
Bluesky is a social media site similar to Twitter/X, in which you can share short 300-character text-based messages, images, and videos in posts that are called skeets. You can follow and be followed by other Bluesky users. As with many other social media channels, Bluesky lets you post, reply to posts, like posts, repost things you find interesting, and quote other users’ posts. You can also make lists of Bluesky users.
Bluesky also has an interesting feature—starter packs—that allows you to group users into a public list. Other users can easily follow everyone in the list by clicking the “Follow all” button.
Bluesky is available on the web at bsky.app and via a mobile app, which can be downloaded at major app stores. A person’s username appends extra subdomain information to the end of the username. For example, my Bluesky username is @davidleeking.bsky.social, and my profile page’s URL is bsky.app/profile/davidleeking.bsky.social (feel free to follow me). I’ve seen some people compare Bluesky to “old Twitter.” By that, people mean Bluesky has the sharing functionality Twitter once had, but it doesn’t have the chaos of the current Twitter/X platform.
Also, you don’t need a Bluesky account to browse posts, which is a really nice feature, especially when reading an article about Bluesky or seeing a post embedded elsewhere that you want to explore further. You can just click and explore instead of having to create an account before you browse.
A Bit of Bluesky History
Bluesky began as a research initiative at Twitter. In 2019, the company wanted to experiment with creating a decentralized version of its platform. So, it developed what turned into Bluesky. In 2021, the Bluesky project spun out of Twitter just before Elon Musk took over.1 Jay Graber, Bluesky’s CEO, soon incorporated Bluesky as an independent company and kept developing the project. By October 2022, Bluesky had a waitlist; by February 2023, it had an invite-only iOS beta. Bluesky opened to the public in February 2024. The platform has experienced rapid growth. In April 2023, there were approximately 50,000 Bluesky users. By September 2023, that number had grown to 1 million users, and by February 2024, it grew to 3 million users.
Recent world politics have helped Bluesky experience significant growth spurts. In August 2024, when Brazil decided to block Twitter/X, Bluesky gained more than 4 million users in under 2 weeks. The recent U.S. presidential election also seemed to affect Bluesky’s growth. In November 2024, millions of Twitter/X users joined Bluesky, which increased the number of users to more than 15 million. For a short time after the election, Bluesky was growing by 1 million users a day, and its mobile app reached the top of the app stores for Apple and Google in the U.S.2 At the time of this writing, the website blueskyusercount.com reports that there are 26,434,815 Bluesky users.
This rapid growth demonstrates that people still like short-form, text-based social media post creation and sharing, but they don’t seem to like Twitter/X’s platform changes or the uncertainty around Elon Musk’s politics. Hence, social media users are migrating to Bluesky, which to many people seems like a safer, more open platform.
Open and Decentralized
The biggest difference between Bluesky and other social media platforms is that it was created with a decentralized platform built on the AT (Authenticated Transfer) Protocol. The AT Protocol is an open standard for decentralized social networking services. One goal of using it to build Bluesky is to allow users to manage a single federated identity across various online platforms and services—a one-stop shop for your profile that can work across multiple platforms.3
Other AT Protocol goals include account portability (the ability to move your account from one provider to another), algorithmic choice (having more control over what you see in Bluesky), interoperation (it should work in different frameworks), and performance (it should work well at a large scale). One caveat I see with using the AT Protocol (and other similar decentralized projects) is that it really only works if other social media platforms, websites and services, and mobile apps also decide to allow that level of portability and functionality.
 But you have to start somewhere, right? Ultimately, it’s an awesome idea. Imagine being able to control your online identity in one place, instead of having separate online identities for each social media service you use, each online subscription you have, and each online game you play. Having one place to manage all of your digital accounts would be so much easier.
Using Bluesky for Libraries
Bluesky can definitely provide benefit to library customers. Consider dusting off all of those “how to use Twitter” posts from 10 years ago, and follow their ideas and suggestions, because the functionality of Bluesky is much the same. One downside to using Bluesky to connect with your community is that you can’t get any insights/analytics yet, so it’s going to be difficult to measure platform growth and engagement, at least in the short term. Third-party social media posting and engagement tools such as Buffer (buffer.com) are starting to incorporate Bluesky as an option, so it’s possible that you might be able to get some analytics from those services.
Should We Introduce Bluesky?
The benefit of introducing Bluesky to your social media offerings will vary by library and by community. Here are some things to consider:
- Do people in your community use Bluesky? To find this out, you’ll need to set up an account and explore local hashtags and frequent social media users in your area to see if they have started to use Bluesky.
- Did your community use Twitter/X, and are they still using it?
- Did your library have an active Twitter/X account that got good engagement and interaction?
- Are local businesses starting to set up Bluesky accounts? Visit some business and local nonprofit websites to see if they have added Bluesky as a social media option.
If the answer is yes to one or more of these questions, there are solid reasons to set up an organizational Bluesky account for your library.
One other aspect to consider is whether you have time to set up and run another social media account. If you’re doing social media well, you are probably actively using Facebook and Instagram. You might be creating and posting video content on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. You might be using TikTok, LinkedIn, or Pinterest. Do you have time to effectively run another platform? If you were successfully using Twitter a few years ago, you probably do have time to add Bluesky into your weekly mix of social media posts. But the added workload of posting to another social media platform is definitely something to carefully consider.
What Should You Post?
Your content will be very similar to what you posted on Twitter/X. Here’s a list of best practices:
- Share what’s going on at your library—My guess is you have something happening every week. Share that information with your Bluesky community.
- Post fun stuff—It’s OK to be a bit goofy occasionally. My guess is that if you have Instagram or TikTok or are experimenting with short-form video in other social media platforms, you have already shared a bit of fun with your community. Do the same with Bluesky. Sharing a mix of serious and fun content helps keep people interested and coming back.
- Hold conversations with your customers—Conversations are where authentic, lasting engagement happens in a text-based social media app.
- Follow your customers—Bluesky users will start to follow your account, but you don’t need to follow everyone back. I suggest following people and organizations that seem to be part of your local community.
- Use a mix of text, images, and videos—People enjoy variety, and multimedia content is king these days.
- Use hashtags—They are very effective in Bluesky.
- Use @ mentions—Mentioning another user in the conversation by using the @ sign (@username), helps keep people engaged in the conversation.
- Post regularly—Set up a posting schedule, and stick to it.
- Find conversations—Look for people who are talking about your organization, and join in the conversation if it makes sense.
Other New Twitter Alternatives
Bluesky isn’t the only Twitter/X alternative out there. But I do think it’s the logical choice if you want to replace your Twitter/X account with something similar that’s experiencing solid growth and activity. Here are the current alternatives:
- Twitter/X is still around, for now. Many people currently want to avoid this platform. But if your customers are still actively engaged with you on Twitter/X, consider keeping it around, at least minimally.
- Threads was created in 2023. As of this writing, it’s the biggest new microblogging platform, at 275 million users. I’m personally seeing more recent activity in the library field on Bluesky, but your industry-related mileage might vary.
- Mastodon is another new decentralized social media platform (it uses ActivityPub rather than the AT Protocol). However, Mastodon’s server-based platform may seem confusing to new users. There are approximately 10 million users there.
Bottom Line
Did you enjoy using Twitter/X back in its heyday? Did short-form microblogging tools help your library connect with your community? If so, you might consider exploring Bluesky. Set up a personal Bluesky account, and follow some other librarians. If you like it, see if your community is starting to use Bluesky. If they are, maybe it’s time for your library to set up a Bluesky account and start posting. |
David Lee King (