Bluesky’s Bold New Move: Embracing Long-Form Content
Elon Musk’s X lets you write long-form content on the platform through its Articles feature, but only if you’re a paying subscriber or business. Decentralized social media startup Bluesky has a different idea.
On Thursday, Bluesky rolled out a new version of its app that integrates with Standard.site, a community project for creating long-form content on the same underlying protocol that powers Bluesky.
Expanding Content Horizons
This means that Bluesky users can now explore content beyond the microblogs or short articles that Bluesky is known for. Instead, they can read articles, blog posts, and newsletters published on the broader network of applications based on the AT protocol, known as “Atmosphere”. This includes sites like Leaflet, pckt, and Offprint, which cater to independent writers and publishers who want to own their content and expand their distribution on the open web.
These articles will initially appear as dynamic link cards – essentially, an enhanced preview. Bluesky says this is just a first step and the functionality will be improved over time.
Image credits:Blue sky
Leveraging Community Projects
This is the second expansion of Bluesky’s capabilities based on other projects built by community members. In February, a startup called Germ became the first private messaging service that could be launched directly from the Bluesky app, thanks to a similar integration.
By building the technology infrastructure alongside its social networking client application, Bluesky is able to take advantage of other applications and services also running on the AT protocol. It’s not a bad deal for third parties either, as they can take advantage of the distribution provided by Bluesky’s network of some 44.5 million registered users.
WordPress and the Open Social Web
The expansion of long-form content follows WordPress’ announcement earlier this month of its own plugin that allows any WordPress site to publish to Atmosphere. (The plugin joins another WordPress already offered for publishing on open social services powered by a different protocol, ActivityPub, such as Mastodon.)
Like Bluesky, WordPress integration relied on Standard.site’s lexion records, which essentially means your blog becomes data on the AT protocol itself, instead of just a link you share on an app like Bluesky. For this reason, any application compatible with the AT protocol could allow its users to read WordPress blog posts.
A Vision for an Open Social Web
With this integration now available on Bluesky, you can see more of the startup’s vision for an open social web: one where the data itself is open and freely distributable, accessible from any client, and where users can move between personal data servers (PDS) at will. (Although Bluesky was the first PDS, there are now others, including those offered by Eurosky, Blacksky, Northsky and others.)
This is certainly different from X’s approach to content, long-form or otherwise, which remains siled within its application and can only be integrated elsewhere on the web.
The Competitive Edge
However, the distribution advantage that X offers is its 550 million monthly active users – something that Bluesky’s open social rival may never be able to beat.
The updated version of Bluesky (v1.122) also includes a handful of other features, the company said, including a refreshed GIF picker and photo viewer, as well as expanded moderation labeling at the account level, as well as a fix for a bug that silently removed some iOS video downloads.
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