Elon Musk’s X lets you write long-form content on the platform through its Articles feature, but only if you are a paid or business subscriber. Decentralized social media startup Bluesky has a different idea.
Thursday, blue sky rolled launched a new version of its application that integrates with Standard sitea community project to create long-form content on the same underlying protocol that powers Bluesky.
This means that Bluesky users can now explore content beyond the microblogs or short posts that Bluesky is known for. Instead, they can read articles, blog posts, and newsletters published in the broader network of applications powered by the AT Protocol, known as “Atmosphere.” That includes sites like Prospect, packageand Separatewhich cater to independent writers and editors who want to own their content and expand its distribution on the open web.
These items will initially appear as dynamic link cards; essentially, an improved preview. Bluesky says this is just a first step and the functionality will improve over time.
This marks the second expansion of Bluesky’s capabilities based on other projects created by community members. In February, a startup called Germ became the first private messaging service that could launch directly from the Bluesky appthanks to a similar integration.
By building the technology infrastructure alongside its social media client application, Bluesky can leverage other applications and services that also run on the AT protocol. It’s not a bad deal for third parties either, as they can take advantage of the distribution provided by the Bluesky network of some 44.5 million registered users.
The expansion into long-form content comes shortly after the emergence of WordPress. advertisement earlier this month of their own plugin that allows any WordPress site to publish to Atmosphere. (The plugin joins another WordPress already offered for publishing to open social services that run on a different protocol, ActivityPub, like Mastodon.)
Like Bluesky, the WordPress integration was based on Standard.site lexion logs, which basically means your blog becomes data from the AT protocol itself, rather than just a link you share in an app like Bluesky. Because of this, any application Supporting AT protocol could allow your users to read WordPress blog posts.
With this integration now coming to Bluesky, you can see more of the startup’s vision for the open social web: one where the data itself is open and freely distributed, accessible from any client, and where users can move between personal data servers (PDS) at will. (Although Bluesky was the first PDS, there are now others to choose from, including those offered eurosky, black sky, northern skyand others.)
This is certainly different from X’s approach to content, whether long-form or not, which remains isolated in its app and can only be integrated into other parts of the web.
However, the advantage that X offers in terms of distribution is its 550 million monthly active users – something Bluesky’s outspoken social rival may never be able to defeat.
The updated version of Bluesky (v1.122) also includes some other features, the company notedincluding an updated GIF picker and photo viewer, and expanded account-level moderation tags, and a fix for a bug that silently deleted some iOS video uploads.
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