A Quick Guide to Using Bluesky and Mastodon Instead of Twitter/X

Davey Faherty

Davey Faherty

— 5 min read
the top half of this image is a cropped photo of a blue sky with some clouds in it. the bottom half is a shot of the band, Mastodon, playing live
I am hilarious

If, for some reason, you wish to rely less on Twitter/X for your organisation and want to try some other platforms, you might find it useful to have a quick guide to Bluesky and Mastodon, two options you have probably heard about. Broadly speaking, Bluesky is the closest thing to a drop-in replacement for Twitter, while Mastodon is a community-oriented sort-of Twitter clone run by volunteers. You may find your target audience on either or both, and both are free to join.

Neither of them are likely to be what Twitter was five years ago any time soon. We are likely in an era of spreading your bets when it comes to this type of platform, and over-reliance on particular providers is showing its age. As for Twitter, it's probably not going anywhere, largely due to inertia, though it is questionable to what extent it is useful. Among those who still use the platform for comms, engagement seems to have dropped off quite drastically over the last few years.

If you need to plug a Twitter-shaped gap in your comms, the two together will go some of the way towards that.

Bluesky

Bluesky emerged from an internal project in Twitter, and hit the internet in its own right, under its own company, in 2023. To a large extent it has a community of people who didn't want to be on Twitter any more in that year. It has a global audience, but is predominantly North American by volume, with about half of active users being based in the USA. This upsets the Europeans.

Discoverability is very low-friction, although it is easy to get washed away.

It feels a lot like Twitter, both in terms of user experience and the nature and type of accounts. It is, however, far better moderated than Twitter, which is one of the big draws.

Bluesky does not publish user data, but third-party estimates put their monthly active user count at around 12 million.

Some users report that getting established on Bluesky can take some time, and engagement can be hard to get, so you might as well start now. If you're doing something relevant to Irish users, introduce yourself and use the #introduction and #speirghorm hashtags. (do you see what they did there?)

Mastodon

Mastodon launched in 2017, powered by free software anyone could run on their own server. Now officially being run as a non-profit, the "core" team is based in the EU and the company overseeing software development is Belgian. It has a heavily European user base, and about 1/4 of users are in Germany. This upsets the Americans.

There are over 1 million Mastodon users.

Discoverability between instances has some friction, and can seem odd, but it's common for your posts to spend a nice bit of time on the timeline.

Mastodon "instances" are a server that someone installed Mastodon on. Each has its own domain name, user accounts, and volunteer moderation team, and they can all talk to each other, so users on different instances can talk to each other. The better instances will manually review sign-ups, so when you create an account, you will write a short message as a "hello" to the volunteers. Nothing too long, something like "Hello, I do social media for Infinite Ice Cream and we'd like to try Mastodon on your server, if that's ok"

Now, if you're in commercial ice cream and you apply to a vegan anarchist server, they're probably not going to be into it. So here are some more or less mainstream instances you can apply to. As well as being amenable to many use cases, they are quite well moderated, probably with a higher degree of vigilance than Bluesky, for example. There's a ton of instances everyone blocks, because they are absolute toilets, and you will be safe from them on these servers.

I should mention that I'm a moderator on .ie in my spare time. At the moment, in addition to the broader community, there are a few accounts there associated with small businesses, public and non-profit organisations and even political parties and representatives. There's also artists, writers, musicians, etc. All have managed to promote themselves and say their piece without annoying anyone to the point of requiring moderator intervention.

Note that mastodon.social is the biggest by a mile, but it is somewhat breaking under its own weight, with the team there turning off features that aren't working well any more. Mastodon works better as a sea of instances of a few thousand people.

After you apply, you should get approved after a day or two, and you can log in. Doll up your account a bit with a short bio and an avatar image and then do an introduction post. If you're doing something relevant to Irish users, introduce yourself and use the #introduction and #mastodaoine hashtags. (do you see what they did there?)

Also, include a reminder "Boosts and follows appreciated" as these are a big step towards discovery on Mastodon, which is far more user-dependent than other platforms. This will mean your posts start popping up on other servers, and people there can find you.

Quality and Frequency of User Interactions

Big and all as Twitter is, it has been repeatedly said that both of these alternative platforms have a higher rate of interaction compared to Twitter. Not even per capita, in total. It's not too hard to kiss your 500,000 Twitter followers goodbye when you start suspecting that half of them can't see your posts, and the other half are plugged in somewhere.

Three Cool Things Both Platforms Share

Newest Posts First on Account Page

Instead of the weird "most popular" display that Twitter now has, both of these platforms will show your newest posts first on your account page. This is of course far more amenable to displaying information to users who are not logged in, or have no account at all, in a meaningful, time-sensitive way.

Widget Friendly

Remember when Twitter timeline widgets used to work on your website? Both of these platforms can support widgets, as they both allow an account timeline to be consumed as JSON. Look for widgets you can use with your account. If one isn't ready for your web software of choice, it's not too hard to build one, if you can grab a developer for a few hours.

Lack of Yer Man

You know yourself

In Conclusion

I've deliberately left out a ton of technical and organisational stuff, related to both platforms, not only to avoid scaring you off but because you're not going to need it. Overall, both of these are worth a lash if you're trying to get away from Twitter.

Having said that, this is the kind of thing I have spent way too long talking, reading and writing about over the last 8 years or so, so if you have any questions, gimme a shout and if I don't have the answer, I can point you in the right direction at the very least.

I promise not to bury you in nerd activist philosophy. Much.