If you're tuned in to digital culture news at all, it's been impossible to miss the chatter about Bluesky over the past month. The fledgling social media site—which looks and acts a lot like Twitter did a decade ago, long before Elon Musk bought it and renamed it X—is exploding in popularity, doubling in size over the past two months to around 20 million users.
Suddenly a site you'd probably only heard of if you spend a lot of time thinking about your social media diet is topping the App Store charts and attracting a flood of folks looking to exit X as it has drifted toward promoting toxicity and even disinformation in the lead up to, and aftermath, of the U.S. presidential election.
All of the reasons for the site's recent boom aside, if you're a new user, the most important thing to you is probably figuring out how to best use it, from making the migration from X, to learning Bluesky's quirks, to finding the people you used to follow elsewhere.
But as much as it can feel like Old Twitter, Bluesky has some unique things to offer—chiefly among them a lack of an algorithm that "learns" (or decides) what you're interested in. That's where a tool in the independently created Bluesky Directory comes in handy.
Assembled by Mubashar “Mubs” Iqbal, Bluesky Directory is essentially a collection of links to Bluesky tools and utilities from across the internet, from a Chrome extension that helps you find all of your old X followers to links to third-party clients that are more customizable than the official Bluesky app and website.
The most useful part of the directory, for Bluesky newbies at least, will be the searchable index of more than 77,000 "starter packs." If you haven't encountered one yet, a starter pack is essentially a list of Bluesky accounts sorted by what unifies the folks behind them. When you open a starter pack—either within the Bluesky app or on the website—you can choose to follow everyone in it with a single tap or click, or scroll down and choose who you want to appear in your feed one by one.
So, for example, if you're a big movie geek, you might enjoy a starter pack like Filmmakers, which features 20-odd directors (Rian Johnson, Kevin Smith, and Lily Wachowski among them). If you love podcasts, you could check out Women in Podcasting. If you want to keep tabs on everyone who writes for Lifehacker, I've created a starter pack for that too.
You can search for starter packs on Bluesky itself, but the experience isn't great. Bluesky Directory's searchable index is a lot more user-friendly. You just type a few relevant terms into the search bar, and you'll be served up any starter packs that match (the site is slightly sluggish—which is to be expected with a million new users coming online every day—but not unusably so).
You'll be able to see a description, the number of accounts on the list, and even a preview of a few of them, right from the results page.
You can browse a list of the most popular starter packs, but if you want a truly bespoke social media experience, it pays to do a granular search. As of this writing, the index includes 77,556 different options, with more being added every minute. (If you've created a starter pack you'd like added to the database, there's a link to submit one right there on the search page). And chances are good if you're interested in a topic, there's a starter pack for it.
Perhaps you want to follow authors who like to post about their cats? Or maybe academics with learned opinions about pizza? COVID-conscious porn performers? I was disappointed there were no results for a search for "Ninja Turtles," but it's early days yet; on the other hand, I found lists of journalists who write for some of my favorite publications, as well as people who've guested on my favorite movie podcast.
Once you find a feed you like, click on the name and you'll be taken to Bluesky, where you can choose who on the list you want to follow (or follow everyone). You can also toggle over to the "Posts" tab to see recent posts from everyone in the starter pack.
Before you know it, you'll have a hyper-specific list of Bluesky follows attuned to your particular interests—which seems, to me, a lot better than having an algorithm throwing rage-bait at your face every time you open the app.
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