Are you on BlueSky? Find us here!

[Brock Beauchamp]

@northsidebaseball.bsky.social on Bluesky

BSKY.APP

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Easily the least terrible faction of Cubs fans on the internet.

 

[Bertz]

This might be more on the Bluesky folks themselves and less on web folks like you but getting skeets to embed as cleanly as tweets would definitely make the transition easier.  Especially now that it seems like a critical mass of writers have migrated over.

 

[Brock Beauchamp]

7 minutes ago, Bertz said:

This might be more on the Bluesky folks themselves and less on web folks like you but getting skeets to embed as cleanly as tweets would definitely make the transition easier.  Especially now that it seems like a critical mass of writers have migrated over.

I talked that over with our lead dev a few days ago and it's an easy fix that should be coming in the next week or so.

[Derwood]

SIDE NOTE: I can't read "Bluesky" as "Blue Sky", I always read it as "BLEW-skee"

Carry on

[Brock Beauchamp]

32 minutes ago, Derwood said:

SIDE NOTE: I can't read "Bluesky" as "Blue Sky", I always read it as "BLEW-skee"

Carry on

I was blissfully ignorant of this way of reading it, now I doubt I'll ever unsee it.

[Stratos]

What is Bluesky?  Is this an anti-Elon alternative to Twitter?

[mul21]

44 minutes ago, Stratos said:

What is Bluesky?  Is this an anti-Elon alternative to Twitter?

Yep.  User interface is pretty similar as well.  Feels like the exodus from Twitter is hastening and more actual journalists are ending up there now.

[CubinNY]

Following!

[Stratos]

5 hours ago, mul21 said:

Yep.  User interface is pretty similar as well.  Feels like the exodus from Twitter is hastening and more actual journalists are ending up there now.

Interesting.  I have no issues with boycotts for whatever reason someone wants, but I also don't think we need more ideological bubbles in our media.  Anyways, a discussion for another forum.

[BigbadB]

7 hours ago, Stratos said:

Interesting.  I have no issues with boycotts for whatever reason someone wants, but I also don't think we need more ideological bubbles in our media.  Anyways, a discussion for another forum.

While I don't typically sign up for social media apps, this one I might find interest in some day. Just not now. But, I do take pleasure in the fact that maybe this one will turn Twitter into nothing more than Truth Social at some point.

[CubinNY]

8 hours ago, Stratos said:

Interesting.  I have no issues with boycotts for whatever reason someone wants, but I also don't think we need more ideological bubbles in our media.  Anyways, a discussion for another forum.

There have always been bubbles. 20 years ago your grammy forwarded you emails from her church sister that the darkies were taking over the neighborhood over on East Main Street. The only difference is that three TV networks tried to do the right thing. Now there are 10 networks with 5 trying to do the right thing and getting called biased by the worst people you know. 

[Bertz]

9 hours ago, Stratos said:

Interesting.  I have no issues with boycotts for whatever reason someone wants, but I also don't think we need more ideological bubbles in our media.  Anyways, a discussion for another forum.

I think beyond any idealogy, the user experience on Twitter has gone way down the last few years.  Community Notes is the only positive change during his tenure.

There's also network effects.  Less so for other verticals I follow but most of the sports people I care about have made the jump (or at least started cross posting) over the last week or three.

[Sammy Sofa]

Twitter is a hunk of horsefeathers. Musk fired something like 80% of the workforce, which dipshits cheer about while totally ignoring that Twitter itself is only technically "working" along the lines of a years-old office PC that is left on 24/7. It has completely lost almost all advertisers and is hemorrhaging users and is only still running because the owner essentially has unlimited funds to keep the lights on for as long as the current version can keep running until it collapses.

BlueSky is...fine. It's an infinitely more tolerable experience to the dumpster fire Twitter and Zuckerberg's monstrosities have become, but it's still hinged on replicating a massively flawed and inherently harmful social media experience, so....yay? It's a better version of an unavoidably bad model.

Edited November 15, 2024 by Sammy Sofa

[Ding Dong Johnson]

I am thoroughly annoyed with the popularity of twitter and that others are copying their annoying format. I want a better mousetrap.

[Brock Beauchamp]

11 hours ago, Stratos said:

Interesting.  I have no issues with boycotts for whatever reason someone wants, but I also don't think we need more ideological bubbles in our media.  Anyways, a discussion for another forum.

To be clear, we didn't move there for ideological purposes and we're still on Twitter. But boy, Twitter has become a real mess over the past few years, both from a tone/vibe standpoint and a technological one.

To peek behind the curtain a little bit, Twitter was always a "meh, whatever" for us (and many others). On average a Twitter user click is worth 30-40% of the same Facebook user click. Twitter has always been crap at monetization and engagement for businesses and it has only gotten worse with time.

[Brock Beauchamp]

56 minutes ago, Ding Dong Johnson said:

I am thoroughly annoyed with the popularity of twitter and that others are copying their annoying format. I want a better mousetrap.

Agreed. From day one the platform was flawed and no one seems particularly interested in fixing its problems.

[Brock Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, Sammy Sofa said:

Twitter is a hunk of horsefeathers. Musk fired something like 80% of the workforce, which dipshits cheer about while totally ignoring that Twitter itself is only technically "working" along the lines of a years-old office PC that is left on 24/7. It has completely lost almost all advertisers and is hemorrhaging users and is only still running because the owner essentially has unlimited funds to keep the lights on for as long as the current version can keep running until it collapses.

BlueSky is...fine. It's an infinitely more tolerable experience to the dumpster fire Twitter and Zuckerberg's monstrosities have begun, but it's still hinged on replicating a massively flawed and inherently harmful social media experience, so....yay? It's a better version of an unavoidably bad model.

Nailed it.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

1 hour ago, Sammy Sofa said:

Twitter is a hunk of horsefeathers. Musk fired something like 80% of the workforce, which dipshits cheer about while totally ignoring that Twitter itself is only technically "working" along the lines of a years-old office PC that is left on 24/7. It has completely lost almost all advertisers and is hemorrhaging users and is only still running because the owner essentially has unlimited funds to keep the lights on for as long as the current version can keep running until it collapses.

BlueSky is...fine. It's an infinitely more tolerable experience to the dumpster fire Twitter and Zuckerberg's monstrosities have begun, but it's still hinged on replicating a massively flawed and inherently harmful social media experience, so....yay? It's a better version of an unavoidably bad model.

I am curious with a bigger audience if the tweaks BlueSky has made around moderation and amplification make a noticeable difference.  But I also fear that too many people have been trained around Facebook/Twitter incentives so anything that looks remotely similar is gonna have a similar path to being an unending wheel of outrage engagement.

[Outshined_One]

This article contains a pretty good rundown of alternatives to Xitter and the positives/negatives of each.

To me, Bluesky feels like the early-ish days of Twitter.  It's a perfectly cromulent social media platform (for better and worse), but there is unfortunate potential for it to drop off a cliff in a hurry.

[WrigleyField 22]

I have some personal connections on Twitter that keep me engaged there. So a lot of my time is spent in DMs, and not the actual platform.

 

It does seem like many are eager for BlueSky to be Left Truth-social which of course would be pointless as a social media platform. 

Like Sammy alluded to we all need less ****** social media in our lives.

For similar reasons I never wanted to jump into threads either.  I'll either live out the Twitter experience forever or until it's too awful to continue, or I'll just revert back to forums full time.

 

So I won't be joining. I hope it works for driving engagement here though. Forums/reddit are infinitely better platforms for meaningful engagement.

[mul21]

12 minutes ago, WrigleyField 22 said:

I have some personal connections on Twitter that keep me engaged there. So a lot of my time is spent in DMs, and not the actual platform.

 

It does seem like many are eager for BlueSky to be Left Truth-social which of course would be pointless as a social media platform. 

Like Sammy alluded to we all need less ****** social media in our lives.

For similar reasons I never wanted to jump into threads either.  I'll either live out the Twitter experience forever or until it's too awful to continue, or I'll just revert back to forums full time.

 

So I won't be joining. I hope it works for driving engagement here though. Forums/reddit are infinitely better platforms for meaningful engagement.

Threads is just dumb.  There's no organization to the things posted in terms of a timeline.  Bluesky is at least going to provide some useful information like I used to get from Twitter.  My "For You" was basically sports and craft beer before the political stuff took over everything there.  Hopefully this can be similar and not too much of an echo chamber.

[Stratos]

1 hour ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

To be clear, we didn't move there for ideological purposes and we're still on Twitter. But boy, Twitter has become a real mess over the past few years, both from a tone/vibe standpoint and a technological one.

To peek behind the curtain a little bit, Twitter was always a "meh, whatever" for us (and many others). On average a Twitter user click is worth 30-40% of the same Facebook user click. Twitter has always been crap at monetization and engagement for businesses and it has only gotten worse with time.

Ok, wasn't suggesting you guys went there for political reasons, I assumed any org wants to be on platforms where users are.

[Stratos]

9 minutes ago, mul21 said:

Threads is just dumb.  There's no organization to the things posted in terms of a timeline.  Bluesky is at least going to provide some useful information like I used to get from Twitter.  My "For You" was basically sports and craft beer before the political stuff took over everything there.  Hopefully this can be similar and not too much of an echo chamber.

Twitter has definitely been more aggressive with the algorithms. I find that annoying.

[Brock Beauchamp]

9 minutes ago, Stratos said:

Ok, wasn't suggesting you guys went there for political reasons, I assumed any org wants to be on platforms where users are.

Oh yeah, no offense taken, I just wanted to be clear on our reasons. And to be frank, for personal reasons I'm less a fan of Twitter by the day for the very reasons many others are.

And given that I started by disliking Twitter back in 2010, my personal opinions on the platform are rock-bottom.

[PackLandVA]

Smart phones are mostly awful. Unfortunately, I own one (but only one).

Social media platforms are mostly evil. I belong to this board, a Packers board (both for over 20 years), and I have a mostly dormant/lurking FB account because that seemed like a necessity 15 years ago.

That’s it. I surf random websites for sports, news, history, data, but I don’t do any type of commentary.

I’m just really down on smart phones because of the always accessible social media attached. I’m not down for me, but rather, pretty much everyone else I know and see.  It’s hard to find people doing just nothing. At a restaurant - everyone is on their phones. Stop light - phones. At the beach, in a park, at the movies - phones. Even social gatherings - everyone is constantly checking their phones. And especially younger folks. They have grown to need instant satisfaction/information.  Throw in more advanced bots and the eventual domination of AI into social media and dialogue will be even worse, if that’s possible.

Sad, but I guess I’m old.

That is all. 

Edited November 16, 2024 by PackLandVA