Beyond the Blue #1
Hello everyone!
My name is Ferran. Since some weeks ago, when I received a Bluesky invite, I have been getting excited about the possibility of seeing an open-source protocol that puts people at the center, which can be tailored to each individual and collective's needs. It's really satisfactory to see the openness of Bluesky's development, as well as its core team's commitment to the values of open-source and building in public.
That's the main reason why I started this newsletter. My plan is to curate the latest news about the Bluesky project and the AT Protocol and send it every week right to your inbox to keep you up to date, but keep in mind that is a side-project that may not last forever :)
I'm also the maintainer of the Bluesky Community Hub, an unofficial community hub devoted to sharing Bluesky and AT Protocol resources that you can find at bskyhub.ferran.cc.
In writing this first newsletter, I realized how much can happen at Bluesky in a week 🤯. It's impressive how quickly the core team is releasing features and improvements at the protocol and client level, as well as the dozens of new projects building on top of the AT Protocol that pop up every day.
I also like to see less technical content about the AT Protocol and Bluesky, like this post describing the status of the privacy at the protocol level. A good read to understand the implications of the right to be forgotten and the right to privacy.
I hope you enjoy this newsletter. If you do, please share it on Bluesky and among your friends!
News
This week saw the release of the first moderation feature! Through the Bluesky client, it's now possible to create and share mute lists of people. Subscribing to these lists will automatically mute all those included.
Bsky.app finally replaces staging.bsky.app as the main URL for the Bluesky client!!
Paul Frazee, one of the main Bluesky developers, started Live code sessions. You can find them here.
Custom feeds are coming to Bluesky soon (check repo). This feature will help people discover and engage with communities. In the meantime, you can check Skyfeed to explore some predefined and custom feeds
This week, Paul clicked the "Change to Public" button on the Bluesky app repo, making it open-source and open to contributions!
Firesky, the tool that allows to see every single new skeet in real time, adds new filtering features.
Emily, DevRel at Bluesky, announced that they are writing new FAQs for regular users and asked for questions and doubts from the community. The responses are quite interesting.
Emily also announced a new Community section focused on devs in the AT Proto Docs, check it out.
A very harsh, but interesting, post from an ActivityPub enthusiast against AT Proto made his place on Hacker news and caused a bit of beef. See also Paul Frazee's answer.
Do you miss the Draft feature from Twitter? Don't worry, Moot (an alternative iOS client) has recently added it.
Featured Articles
Federation Architecture Overview by The Bluesky Team
Featured apps tools clients
Kite: A feature rich Bluesky web client with glorious UI
Firesky.tv: A web app that republishes every single new post/reply from the Bluesky firehose in real-time.
BlueSky Post Count and Author Stats: A website that aggregates several Bluesky statistics including number of users and posts.
Don't forget that you can find more apps, tools and clients in the Bluesky Community Hub.
Featured Skeet
Who is new in Bluesky?
The Internet Archive 👉🏼 @archive.org
The Tech Crunch 👉🏼 @techcrunch.bsky.social
Bluesky Stats
Number of users: 82,644
Number of skeets: 1,946,523
Data extracted from https: /bsky.jazco.dev.stats on 18 05/2023
Please share your opinions, ideas, and improvements with a reply here or on Telegram.
Sent 💌 by @Ferran.cc