Week 304 was posted by Charanjit Chana on 2023-08-21.
There are no longer 100 million active users on Threads, it's probably carved a niche for some of it's creators to connect with their audience but it's not for me.
While you can still find me on Threads @cchana, I haven't updated it much at all, where you'll find me currently is floating between X, nee Twitter, @cchana and Bluesky @cchana.dev.
Twitter (I can't seriously call it X) is still the place for me because of the accounts I follow and engage with. A small subset of them are on Bluesky, but not enough for it replace Twitter unless I reduce my usage down to next to nothing.
The renaming of Twitter to X is dumb. It's hard to see such a recognisable name and words just thrown into the bin on the whim of someone who clearly doesn't know what he's doing. Even worse when the way to fix Twitter feels so obvious.
Bluesky gripes
I have a couple of gripes with Bluesky. Mostly small things, but there are a couple of biggies too.
- Dismissing images you've tapped can require aggressive swipes. I thought this was Bluesky specific but experienced it on Twitter recently too, but I think the Bluesky app consistently makes it difficult.
- It's a closed network, I have linked to my profile from my personal site, but unless you're a Bluesky user you can't see it. I prefer open networks. Maybe it will change in the future?
- Very minor UI gripe, but when swiping through, some posts are briefly highlighted.
- Uploading profile header images to your profile is an absolute mess. I followed the sizing instructions and it crops in weird ways. I had to create and upload more than 5 versions of it before I settled on something that as good enough.
- Hashtags don't work. Of course, you can post content with hashtags but they're not linked.
- I couldn't tell you if notifications were working or not. Sometimes I get notified, others I don't. In the app, always but not sure what is and isn't bubbled up to the system level notification service.
- In the iOS app, if you're searching you can't tap the space bar twice for a period which is absolutely insane given usernames can have periods in them!
Bluesky likes
Verification is very interesting, you can tie your handle to your domain (@handle.bsky.app is the default) and I've registered and verified cchana.dev
If a business, individual, or any entity really, has their own domain or sub-domain they can make their handle match and that's a pretty good way to bring it all together. Part of me would like the verification to be separate from the handle, or making the same optional, but if the domain is active then it probably brings a bit more accountability than being verified for $8 on Twitter.
Overall it's not a terrible experience it's just very quiet at the moment. The iOS app is lightweight and pretty fast. Hard to give a positive review given it does have some niggles but I'm hoping it can open up to more people soon.
If you're on Bluesky, give me a shout!
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