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Comment by rvz | Hacker News Reader

I am still predicting that BlueSky is the real Twitter alternative. [0]

All it needs to do is to get rid of the invite system (early) and open up its web app [1] and you will just watch it grow faster than the rest of the alternatives, and over time Twitter users will naturally move to BlueSky.

What they got right is that they have both iOS and Android apps early and there is no 'choose an instance' mess, with proper search functionality and there's a official default server to avoid first impression confusion.

We'll see what the normal users (non-techies) will choose in a few months time once the invite system is gone and the web app is ready and how strong Twitter's network effect is against BlueSky.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34137385

[1] https://staging.bsky.app/

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Roughly half my Twitter feed is people ushering themselves and others over to Bluesky. Not just tech-oriented people, and the people offering invites are basically keeping up with the people asking but just barely. There’s also (some but) very little skepticism from people checking it out. I think the only chance it doesn’t succeed is if people have trouble reconstructing a sufficient portion of their existing networks.

Disclosure: I’m just an observer, I could probably get an invite if I asked for one but I’m enjoying seeing it play out without any special treatment, and I don’t participate much on Twitter so I’m definitely not going to add much to any new Twitterlike platform.

I think the only chance it doesn’t succeed is if they do what clubhouse did.

It's interesting how different bubbles we're in. I can't recall having seen anyone mention Bluesky, but a fair proportion of the people I interact with on Twitter either are now both on Mastodon and Twitter or have moved fully.

If it's truly open, there'll be two-way bridges and/or the good bits will get adopted elsewhere and there'll still be just one Fediverse.

It feels like such a waste that they're not trying for interop from the start, though.

Federation is still planned, but by the time it happens, there will be (a) a critical mass of users on the original server, including high-profile accounts (b) more consideration of UX under a federated model.

It may be that the official app defaults to the original instance, perhaps with a de-emphasized way to switch it. It may also ask for favorite topics first and suggest an instance based on that.

However the onboarding works, I'm confident the solution will be cleaner than Mastodon's. Lessons will have been learned about how clunky federation can be and how much problems it causes for features like search and recommendations.

The main reason search and recommendations are clunky on Mastodon is user resistance against being more like Twitter. As someone who'd like it to be more like Twitter that is annoying, but people also need to understand that to a significant number of people not being like Twitter is a major selling point.

Yea, there’s a strong resistance because somehow the community thinks algorithms are only there for the benefit of investors and could actually be of benefit to users who don’t want to micromanage who they’re following.

As for search, it’s bizarre any community would be against such a basic feature.

From TechDirt: “I would talk about some of the cooler Mastodon algorithms I’d been finding, but after a few them then were yelled at by a bunch of Mastodon users, I’ve generally decided it’s not worth promoting those useful tools, for fear that people yell at them to shut them down.”

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/28/six-months-in-thoughts-o...

Personally I 1) want algorithms, and will do some for myself when I get a chance, and I detest reverse chronological, but I get the resistance given that Twitter has kept pushing it (e.g. you can switch to "following" but it doesn't stick - Twitter keeps switching back), 2) would like search. But to search what you need to realise to get why this resistance is there you need to keep in mind that a lot of early refugees from Twitter were marginalised users for whom search was regularly weaponised against them to harass. Search will come - there are regularly new attempts and a lot of the resistance will be less relevant as the userbase change, but to get buy-in it will need to provide a strong degree of opt-in and user control. Any system that fails to provide that will fail to win over those users who see that control as a strong reason to use the Fediverse.

> All it needs to do is to get rid of the invite system

Exactly. The hype will be dead by the time people can actually join.

If we look at the example of Clubhouse, the invite system just pissed a lot of people off. So by the time they finally opened up the app to the public, the goodwill of the potential userbase was spoiled.

Invite systems feel bad and hurt your relationship with your future users.

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