Tips to get started with BlueSky

YES!! Finally scientists are moving to bluesky in large numbers! I'm very excited about this - bluesky is a very nice network with lots of cool options. I'm probably the millionth person making a list like this, but  everyone who moves makes the network more useful, I think. The past few days I've shared my tips on how to get started with a number of collegues so I figured it might be of interest to other people taking the step to BlueSky. 

More elaborate resources about getting started:

• BlueSky for scientists 

• Getting started on BlueSky; a guide for scientists 

Two tips:

• Make a bio: Before you start following people, make sure to write your bio in a descriptive way, so people can see who you are and where you work. This is important if you would like people to follow you back as it sets you apart from spam accounts

• Repost = the new ❤: On bluesky, the timeline is chronological. There is no algorithm pushing posts with a lot of likes. That means that your likes are not promoted to other people like on other social media networks such as X or Instagram, and your best way forward is to repost as well as liking if you think it’d be interesting to your followers.

1. Find people you know from X

·   Add people who you follow on twitter:

·   https://www.bluesky-migrate.com/

·   To allow other people to find you more easily, you can add your bluesky handle to your twitter bio (especially if you have a non-unique name)

2. Livening up your following feed (timeline) with new people using Feeds and Starter packs:

Starter packs

·       Collections of people to follow with particular interests

·   You don’t have to follow everyone on a starter pack but you can follow them all at once; to get added, ask the person in charge in a comment or DM as they are the only ones who can add you

·   Browse starter packs: https://blueskydirectory.com/starter-packs/all

·   Each starter pack comes with an automatic feed containing all posts from people in the starter pack.

Feeds

·       Collection of posts with particular keywords

·   Browse science feeds that already exist: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tJw1r_Dif9AN6lVNNaZ-nwDdbM7tPemobo5_S2aEl_U/edit?gid=0#gid=0

·   If you ❤ a feed and “pin to home” you get “alternative timelines” as tabs in your main timeline. If you then also go to “Settings/Following Feed Preferences/Show Posts from My Feeds” posts collected by feeds will appear on your Following feed also.

·   There are also general personal feeds which are useful: 📌 with all posts where you replied with the pin emoji; Mutuals; Quiet Posters; OnlyPosts (you can find them in the Feeds menu search function)

Useful links to external websites:

Other people can write applications that interact with bluesky without you logging in with your complete account details: this is done with app passwords. You can generate them under settings/app passwords.

·       List operations, list & starter pack operations https://nws-bot.us/bskyStarterPack.php

·       See which lists/starter packs you are on : clearsky.app

How to make your own feed:

Follow Mark Rubin and Daryll Marie for tips and advice 😉, I use skyfeed.app which is pretty easy to work with.

·   https://bsky.app/profile/markrubin.bsky.social/post/3kyvjkwjint2g

·   Add content from feeds to default timeline, using settings/Following Feed Preferences/Show Posts from My Feeds

·   Pin a post to the top of the feed using the did:plc identifier of the post bsky : https://bsky.app/profile/daryllmarie.bsky.social/post/3k3w2pixak42o

You can make a starter pack directly from the main bluesky interface. Using the list operations links listed above, you can change you starter pack into a list to use it as input for feeds for example.