So I wrote a thing on the occasion of @techmeme.com's 20th birthday, and I couldn't help but drag Bluesky into it (don't dogpile me please). news.techmeme.com/250912/20-ye...

…I suppose the funny part is some people cheat *so* shamelessly. One applicant even answered question #4 with a nonexistent hallucinated Semafor story URL:

As many of you know, Bluesky posts routinely appear on Techmeme. We source them a number of ways...

Now there's a new way: *you* can add posts from our desktop homepage! Look for the button in the image below. Our editors need to approve your submission, but will for anything they deem value-add.

There are still eyebrow-raising realignments to discover if you scroll around long enough...

(link: x.com/nicknotned/s... )

Also, since I know people here love to opine about Bluesky🦋✨ vs. X, there's a short essay question on the application that gives you another opportunity to do so! techmeme.com/jobs

30M users is nice but the brighter spot for Bluesky is that daily activity, even ignoring the spikes, has basically been climbing since last fall. This follows mostly flat activity for much of 2024. So there's finally a real growth flywheel, at least for now.

(chart via bsky.jazco.dev/stats)

if planet earth could read today's news

Polish what now? Excuse me, Gemini?

Bluesky appears to depend on Twitter-defection waves to grow, at least to date. What will trigger the next big wave? Nation-level bans? US deportations? Other Trump chaos?

(chart via bsky.jazco.dev/stats )

Contrast Bluesky's CEO's remark here to this confirmation of the link penalty from X's proprietor:

Pretty sure a T-shirt could fix this:

A few months ago there seemed to be a glimmer of hope this might be the place that gets critical mass among journalists and other news watchers. Feels like that hope has dissipated.

If Bluesky could turn a bunch of these red boxes green, I think there might still be hope, but time is running out.

Interesting criticism about the community/culture/vibe here from Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36554053

I don't think this is a comprehensive characterization or destiny for Bluesky, but maybe a reminder that networks aiming for major scale need to avoid cultural cul-de-sacs.

😳😅 https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1665379838218100738

So good: https://www.theonion.com/ron-desantis-relaunches-presidential-campaign-from-insi-1850475896

Would love if there were a lot more of this type of content here (which accounts for 90% of my time spent on Twitter)

👋 Here until Friday!