Twitter/X alternative Blue sky is gearing up for one of the biggest weekends in social media with the release of custom streams geared for Super Bowl fans. One stream focuses on discussions surrounding the big game itself, while the other also includes news on Taylor Swift, who are expected to attend to cheer on her boyfriend, Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs.
The attention paid to Swift’s presence at Kelce games during the season has divided sports fans, leading the NFL to defend his coverage of the pop star — especially after Kelce commented that the NFL “overdid it.”
But this gap is also the perfect time to show off Bluesky’s support for algorithmic options — a differentiating feature for the startup that aims to become a decentralized version of Twitter.
On Bluesky, users don’t need to be locked into a main, algorithmically driven feed like they are on other social networks. Instead, the platform supports the creation of a wide variety of custom streams to create unique views on its public content. Some of these are created by the Bluesky team, such as the “What’s Hot” stream of popular posts, while others are created by community members, such as the special news stream with posts from verified news organizations or the one with cute animal pictures, for example. Developers have also created tools to create custom streams, such as Bluesky stream creator and Skyfeedallowing anyone to create their own streams using a visual editor.
In the case of the Super Bowl, Bluesky decided to demonstrate the power of its custom feed capabilities with two variations – one a Super Bowl LVIII stream that will help football fans find each other on the growing social network. The other is a similar stream, but also features Taylor Swift chatter in the middle of the conversation. Cleverly, Bluesky named this “SB (Taylor’s Version).”
Famous Member of the Bluesky team Emily Liuthe idea behind the multiple feeds came from the fact that “…some football fans have strong feelings about *not* seeing TS-related content in their football news…,” he said.
As light and seemingly silly as this use case is, it’s a perfect demonstration of what it means to personalize social media to your interests through algorithmic selection.
Streams you like can be pinned to your home page for easy access, making everyone’s version of Bluesky unique. There are a wide variety of custom streams to choose from. Some are local streams, like these new Super Bowl streams, while others just give you a different view of your network, like streams that include posts from your “Mutuals,” streams of posts that are “Popular with Friends,” or streams that contain posts from “Quiet Posters” – meaning people who participate in conversations less often and whose posts might otherwise have been missed.
While Bluesky isn’t necessarily known for having a large community of sports fans, it has gained more attention after this week’s public release after a long invite-only period that had some wondering if it arrived too late. But so far, things are looking good for the new network on that front. After opening its doors on Tuesday, Bluesky added another 1.3 million users — that’s more than that Mastodon’s monthly active user base currently, for comparison. (Mastodon is another open source Twitter competitor, but based on a different protocol). Overall Bluesky has over 4.5 million users since Friday afternoon.
Image Credits: Blue sky
Whether custom feeds prove long-term traction remains to be seen. X has proven surprisingly sticky, even though it now faces many competitors from small startups to tech giants like Meta. As Twitter, the network was the go-to place for real-time sports commentary, analysis and fan reaction – a habit that can be hard for football fans to break, no matter what kind of new tools to manage their networks.
