Yeah it’s like hashtags but fundamentally different. Forums have had categories or “sub forums” since the 80s which were far more useful than hashtags ever were. Hashtags didn’t work on Twitter precisely because they didn’t have an owner/moderators, rules, descriptions, FAQs, look and feel, etc.
those things are not necessary on a microblogging platform. Those things are necessary on a forum. This is not a forum.
Microblogging is just a generic term for tweeting. It doesn’t define any specific product. It didn’t define Twitter, which changed many times and added many things that were not strictly “necessary” but made the app better. Forums don’t need subforums either but it made big ones much better.
all of those crappy things twitter added? live audio calls and “circles” or whatever? didn’t use them. they didn’t improve the product, only bloated it and demonstrated a profound confusion about what it was meant to be.
This is what Twitter was like when I started using it and it was a “pure” microblogging platform. It didn’t even have asymmetric Follows or Likes, or RTs, or at mentions, Lists, embedded photos or videos, etc. It was improved by adding things and then it started stagnating and usage declined.
I remember early twitter. i remember when they added things that enhanced the actual core product, like native retweets. but the crap they kept tacking on later deviated from that product and tried to make something that did everything. live audio calls are a total departure. dumb addition.
My claim and prediction is that desire for hashtags pointed at a real need in the core product experience but one that hashtags utterly failed to solve. Call subcommunities “Super Hashtags” if you want but we need to solve this unsolved problem for Bluesky to thrive.
no we don’t. hashtags served their role. it was an optional way for people to categorize a post so people could search for related posts, usually about breaking news or something ephemeral like a hashtag game in the vein of #RemoveAWordRuinAMovie. We don’t need subcommunities for these things.
Look at #linux or #golang (two topics I find interesting). They're far less interesting than r/linux or r/golang because they're totally unmoderated and generic. Hashtags have no culture. So hashtags just don't solve the problem. They're not fit for function. Anyway, have a good day Mike!
I don't think I can agree with "Hashtags have no culture" as a general statement… some, in some places don't, some in some places do. On the Fediverse for example, there's a lot of culture around which hashtags you should use for what.
Okay, maybe a little bit but not enough to be useful. Also, I'm definitely not interested in emulating the success of the Fediverse with Bluesky 😉
it’s not a real problem. You’re trying to shoehorn a forum into a place that doesn’t belong.
I disagree. It is a real problem, and I am also of the opinion that it would be smart for Bluesky to tackle it, rather than merely trying to be old Twitter but decentralized. If we don’t foster community building at product level, then this app might as well be just a glorified RSS reader.
You're both correct. Hashtags aren't forums. They're temporary conversational autonomous zones. They're meant to be disposable and unowned. If you want to gatekeep, get a room, a mailing list, or a domain. You can germanate a colony from a hashtag, but not the reverse.
Yeah, I wouldn’t try to use hashtags as communities. That’s not what Reddit did either. Hashtags were an interesting hack but too minimal to solve the communities problem we had on Twitter and have inherited with Bluesky.
I think that's the point he's making. He's saying a hybrid between a microblogging platform and a forum is something that could help retention and lead to a better platform overall
right but it’s not. No one is asking for that.
I am
In general, on a site with 30-40M users, statements in the form "nobody is/was asking for X" or "nobody wants this" are generally false ;)
To be fair nobody on Twitter was asking for X but that’s what they ended up getting lol. but of course here i mean the number of people who want this is fairly insignificant from a statistical point of view. those people can always find that experience with other apps.
You zeroed in on the issue central to what ATProto hasn't achieved yet, which is how does one make a protocol beyond billionaire control.
This protocol is billionaire-proof. Most are.
is it now
Are we gonna do this thing here too now 🫣
we gotta give @internet.bsky.social a mega-thread to design for
Ideally Bluesky will not implement every feature request or social modality Let the ecosystem build other apps to fill the gaps. This is a micro-blogging site
You might not be, not everyone is, but @jacob.gold is explicitly asking for that and suggesting it as a potential fix for retention lol. I think there could be some interesting ways to find a middle ground between Twitter/Reddit, whatever that looks like. Not saying it needs to replace microblogging
people are welcome to build forums on atproto, but polluting and bloating the microblogging app with that is how you end up with facebook.