The social media app Bluesky just reached the top of the free download charts for Apple’s app store in the United States, making it—for the moment, at least—more popular than Meta’s Threads and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The decentralized social media platform has received a fresh influx of users over the past week as more X users sour on Elon Musk’s political ambitions and abandon his social media platform for an alternative. Over a million new users have joined Bluesky since the 2024 US presidential election on November 5, which was shaped by Musk’s influence.
First launched in 2019 as a project within Twitter, Bluesky gained independence from the company before Musk’s acquisition and its subsequent name change. Bluesky also captured the attention of some ex-tweeters back in 2023, when new users were only able to sign up through an invite system. Now you no longer need to have a code to join, and anyone can sign up. Interested in giving Bluesky a try? Here’s some advice for creating an account, finding who to follow, and tidying up your new home.
Get Started
The social media platform is available in your browser at bsky.app or through a mobile app (Android, iOS). I’m still getting the hang of it, but I do know that Bluesky will give you almost an overwhelming amount of choices right when you sign up, like the option to host your own server. That’s cool, and it keeps the platform decentralized, but it’s probably more involved than you want to be if you’re just online looking for sports scores and shitposts.
As you’re creating an account, you’ll probably want to leave Bluesky Social as your hosting provider, as it’s what most people use. Next, enter your email address, create a strong password, and enter your birth date to verify that you’re over the minimum age of 13. After this, you’ll need to come up with some witty user handle. Keep in mind that the complete name will be expanded to @examplehandle.bsky.social. Continue setting up your profile by filling out your bio and uploading a photo or creating an avatar.
Before we start following anyone, go ahead and open Settings to switch on the toggle for two-factor authentication, which will keep your account more secure. Next, click on the Moderation tab to add any words you’d like to mute. Here’s also where you can choose whether you’d like to see or block any adult content in your feed.
Find People to Follow
One of the platform’s highlights is the freedom of choice you get when deciding what you want to see. First up are the Discover and Following feeds, which should be familiar to users of X. Respectively, they show you an algorithmically generated feed of popular posts and a reverse-chronological feed of posts from people you follow. As a new user, you’ll see a list of popular accounts to follow right off the bat.
You can also curate your own shareable lists of users to follow, or choose to follow lists of feeds curated by other Bluesky users. Following one of these curated lists—called starter packs—is a great way to follow large groups of accounts at once based on a niche or specific interest.
For example, WIRED put together a starter pack for readers to easily follow our reporters and staff members who are on the platform. You can visit this web page for a searchable database of all the available starter packs. There are starter packs available for heavy metal bands, gardening, science fiction authors, queer transit nerds, and so much more. All of this makes it easy to plug right into communities of folks with shared interests.
Manage the Flow
Navigating back to the home tab, the Discover feed of posts will look familiar at first glance to anyone who’s been on Twitter this decade. The look, layout, and even the mechanics are mostly the same. Tap the heart to like a post, press the two arrows to repost it to your followers, or click the little chat bubble to reply to the post. It’s worth noting that your likes are public on Bluesky and viewable by anyone. (Looking at you, Ted Cruz.)
Going next into your Settings, you may want to open Chat Settings to make some adjustments to the way direct messages work in Bluesky. The standard setting is to receive direct messages only from users you follow. You can open up this setting to receive messages from anyone on the platform if you want, or you can turn off DMs entirely if you’d rather just be left alone.
While you’re under the hood tweaking the settings on your new account, might I also suggest opening the Accessibility Settings and opt into requiring alt text descriptions on images before your post. Alt text is crucial to help blind or low-vision users understand what’s in an image, and it’s an essential tool for helping everyone navigate and enjoy Bluesky. This setting will serve as a solid reminder to take a few seconds and add some descriptive text to any visual media posts on the platform.
