🦋 Cloud Native is on Bluesky!

It's a weird and fragmented time for social media in tech. I found my home with the cloud native and tech community on Twitter around the start of the Docker and Kubernetes projects (2014-ish), and it became my daily feed for learning and sharing with others. Many of whom I've since met at conferences and become IRL friends.

But then, over the last few years, many of us stopped being active on Twitter/X, and some left altogether. Some went to Mastodon and the ActivyPub protocol, which I still hope for, and some went to Meta's Threads. I never felt like there were enough cloud native people active on those to replace my heydays of Twitter.

I joined Bluesky a year ago, which started as a spin-off project inside Twitter. They are creating a new "AT Protocol" (often called ATProto). Like all new social media startups/projects, it was quiet at Bluesky initially, and most people I knew just had a "first post" empty profile.

But over the last few months, our Cloud Native and Kubernetes families have become quite active on Bluesky. Some are proclaiming it's the return of the cloud native crew!

Seeing the influx of tech people coming over to Bluesky reminds me that we *all* made tech twitter what it was, not the other way around.
— Kelsey Hightower (@kelseyhightower.com) 2024-10-23T03:31:48.493Z

We are so back. ☸️💙
— Ian Coldwater 📦💥 (@lookitup.baby) 2024-11-09T17:41:56.612Z

Today feels like a good day to delete the Twitter app from my device.
— Ashley Willis-McNamara (@ashleywillis.bsky.social) 2024-11-05T15:54:32.520Z

Massive props to people like @kelseyhightower.com who give up their hard-earned large followings on Twitter to help make alternative platforms like Bluesky viable. I will always have nothing but respect for those who take a stand.
— John T. Bonaccorsi (@johnbon.dev) 2024-10-23T02:47:00.413Z

Bluesky has been on a tear of organic growth this year. Huge swaths of signups have happened.

Bluesky adds 700,000 new users in a week. The majority of new users are from the US, and the app is currently the number 2 free social networking app in the US App Store www.theverge.com/2024/11/11/2...
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren.co.uk) 2024-11-11T22:45:53.986Z

Bluesky now has 13M+ users, the @atproto.com developer ecosystem continues to grow, and we’ve shipped features like DMs and video! We’re excited to announce that we’ve raised a $15M Series A to continue growing the community, investing in Trust and Safety, and supporting the dev ecosystem.
— Bluesky (@bsky.app) 2024-10-24T16:33:56.586Z

GitHub has recently added the butterfly to our profile options.

The Bluesky Key Features

Web app is https://bsky.app with official apps in the iOS and Google stores.
Feels like early Twitter.
No feed algorithm by default, you see what you follow, in cronological order.
You can create or follow custom feeds (algos?) that others made! (this is slick)
Your handle can be a domain name you control.
We recently got new features like DMs and short video uploads. It'll take some time before it has all that were used to with other platforms, but hey, no ads or hidden feed manipulation!

Bluesky is built to make social more like the Web again, so we will never suppress links. Link to your writing, your art, your personal site — this is the social internet, designed from the ground up to be open and interoperable.
— Jay 🦋 (@jay.bsky.team) 2024-11-12T05:16:58.930Z

Starter Packs (quickly following your favs)

One of the hardest parts of joining a new social platform is finding all the old accounts you used to follow. Bluesky has the fantastic feature of Starter Packs, which anyone can create. It's a list of accounts that someone can join all at once.

Here's a directory with hundreds of thousands of Starter Packs to search through.

Try it out by using these I follow to seed your feed with awesome people and projects:

Custom Feeds

You don't have to stick with the default feed of "only show me people I follow." There are thousands of feeds programmed by others. You can find them on the feeds page at https://bsky.app/feeds and add them to your home page. I switch between custom feeds daily as I want to focus on certain topics/people groups.

There's a KubeCon feed!

Custom Lists

Feeds are a way to see posts of people you do and don't follow, with simple or complex filtering and sorting, based on the feeds algo.
Starter Packs are lists of accounts you can share and follow. Ideal for bulk-following.
Lists are something you create, but are more like simple personal feeds of just people you follow around a topic/theme.

The AT Protocol

Since you're likely a developer-type reading this, the good news is there are many things you can do with the AT Protocol and Bluesky itself to customize what you want your social to be.

You can help us make this better (tips)

Since we're not forced into a specific algo, you gotta do the work of following starter packs and a lot of people to give your feed that fresh feeling:

I *still* see people who only follow 150 people complain that this place isn't exciting enough. FOLLOW. MORE. PEOPLE. There's no algorithm spoon feeding you content here. You have to be a little bit active to find it. Just a little bit.
— Mary Gillis (@marygillis.bsky.social) 2024-11-11T14:44:49.085Z

There are lots of guides and tools out there to help you "move" to Bluesky:

I recently made a decision that I wasn't going to sit by and "wait for Bluesky to be more active then X." Carlos is right, it takes action to create a community:

We need to be intentional if we want Bluesky to be the new hub for our Cloud Native community. This week, let's make it happen: 👍Like ✍️Comment 💪Repost 🤙Post 👋Hashtags #KubeCon #KubeConNA #CNCF ✌️Include media. Don't forget to edit ALT 👊Follow Repost this! Find me this week and tell me you did
— Carlos Santana (@santana.dev) 2024-11-09T14:34:05.793Z

See you in the blue skys!

Read it here.