Notices by Laurens Hof (laurenshof@laurenshof.online)

Bluesky has 3 million accounts, invites going away soon

Some news from Bluesky: yesterday the network reached the milestone of 3 million accounts. This milestone comes 2 months after hitting the 2 million mark. While there are no official numbers for Monthly Active Users (MAU), Kuba Suber estimates around 500k MAU, based on the daily and weekly active users. For comparision, Mastodon has between 1 million and 1.5 million MAU, depending on the source.

Bluesky’s growth is far from over, as Bluesky said that that ‘Invite codes are going away soon’. This is different from opening up the network for federation, which is also planned for early 2024.

Bluesky is explicitly positioning itself as a place that is welcoming and suitable for news organisations. Bluesky team member Emily published an explainer how newsrooms can use Bluesky for the upcoming election season. Not everyone is convinced the network is ready yet though, as ændra explains some features that the network needs to be fit for purpose.

#bluesky

https://laurenshof.online/bluesky-has-3-million-accounts-invites-going-away-soon/

Dutch public broadcaster quits X

The Dutch broadcasting company KRO-NCRV has announced it is immediately ceasing the use of X. The news comes after a week of racism and hatred on the trending hashtag #Akwasi. Akwasi is a Dutch rapper who was a participant on the TV Show ‘The Smartest Person’. Other Dutch public broadcasters, notably including the main public broadcasting organisation NOS, is also considering leaving X over the amount of hatred and vitriol on the platform.

What strikes me about this announcement, and the consideration of other organisations like the NOS to do the same, is that it indicates my thinking of how platform migrations happen has been off. In the beginning of the Twitter migration wave I assumed that the process would happen as follows:

Someone sees that platform A is bad and becoming worse. They search for alternatives, and if they find alternative platform B, and deem it good enough of a replacement, they migrate to platform B. My thinking has mainly been focused on platform B: is B providing a good enough alternative to A?

Instead, the current situation with KRO-NRCV indicates that alternative platforms play a minor role in the consideration to leave. The decision is more straightforward: at some point a platform becomes bad enough that an organisation leaves. Instead of pointing to direct microblogging alternative platform where they will become active, they point towards their entire social media stack instead.

#Akwasi

https://laurenshof.online/dutch-public-broadcaster-quits-x/