Amazing thread

Last week I gave a talk in Sydney. Someone invited me to a party happening one week later. I laughed, because I live in another country. I returned home to Wellington and joked to my wife that we can’t go, of course. She said “why not?” So yeah, we flew back to Sydney just to attend a party.

Oh and while we're talking about the future of social media and gardens, here's my big epiphany that led to a whole new product. Check out this article: jonbell.medium.com/hey-creators... I'm basically saying that creators should have a single place to put all the cool stuff they're up to. (cont)

If you're following me because of my thoughts on social media, especially because of my @webdirections.bsky.social talk, a few things you gotta do: 1) Follow @erlend.sh 2) Read what his team is up to at bsky.app/profile/erle... 3) Check out @spritelyinst.bsky.social and spritely.institute

A story about joining Microsoft 10-15 years ago and why people thought my name was Joe. I joined the Windows Phone design team, and I was used to working in big business. I know things are slow. I know it can be frustrating. Heck, I grew up in DC, with my friends' parents working in the government.

Hey so if anyone makes a starter pack called like People Who Used to Be Active Online But Got Burned Out and They’re Still Here But Just In a Different, Less Clout-Chasing Phase But You Should Still Follow Them Because When They Post Projects They’re Still Worth Seeing please add me to it

Exciting news from my Vessel Spotting project, where I draw little pixel art of ships I spot in Wellington and track where they go in the world. See the ship at the top? That's a car carrier with a really unique look, returning home to Japan, the furthest I've seen a ship go.

Waving from the airport to go home, thanks to the 900 jillion friendly and smart people I spoke to at another wonderful @webdirections.bsky.social ! ❤️❤️❤️

I say this with love and bemusement, not shade, but wow Sydney residents are extremely proud of their awesome home. Like, as proud as Texans. It’s notable.

I’ve been preparing for this talk for a long time. Now that it’s done, two songs keep running through my head: Kendrick: “sometimes you gotta pop out and show [people]” — I love the stage, and it’s been five years since my last new material. Pleased it went well.

@bwood.me I just woke up in Sydney and I’m procrastinating so I’ll add a low-hanging design crit notes: A) Logo cropping on the top on my standard latest iPhone B) P in app password form could be lowercase to match cases C) Add the same spacing between the note and the button that use use between

Working with @acemarke.dev was a highlight of my career and becoming his friend was a highlight of my life ❤️

Just got off stage sharing my latest talk! www.arbiter.space/futureofsoci... @pfrazee.com , this is the one I mentioned before, where I keep saying "and bsky is already doing this"

Really excited about this. Scooping up links is one of my main use cases for social media

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

@marybnolan.bsky.social Great job on the talk! 👏

@johnallsopp.bsky.social Hello, can you add me to the starter pack?

I wonder where I should eat dinner in Sydney near Ultimo

blueskywordcloud.com is here! Took me about 5 hours (with some distractions) and it was mainly just a fun little app to build. I outlined pretty much every step of how I made it no code👇 Thanks to those of you who followed along!

Hello from my first time in Sydney! I’m attending @webdirections.bsky.social and will soon be in a workshop with long time internet hero Josh Clark. Then tomorrow I do my talk in this unique looking Gehry building: Also this açai place is playing How Soon Is Now which I find fitting.

Spent the morning setting up a Bluesky labeller. Couldn’t get it working but I got pretty far. #failinpublic

I find it disappointing but entirely expected that on Mastodon everyone is cheerleading their thing, on Threads, they’re cheerleading their thing, and Threads is cheerleading their thing. Fediverse or Atproto, I’m just excited that decentralised is exploding in popularity.

Give been thinking about social media a lot, again. When I worked at Twitter, our data showed it took years for someone to become a consistent user. It was too hard to find people to follow, some people post too much, others post too little, it was hard to keep up. And posting is scary and lonely.

I am rooting for decentralized, I am rooting against X, and I love Bluesky. I put together some stats to compare how things are going across apps, protocols, and centralized vs decentralized. Some disclaimers: * Solid numbers are hard to come by * It's likely I messed up some numbers * I love bsky

@mcfunley.com Really enjoyed your presentation, thank you for sharing!

@jedmund.com I just remembered reaching out to you about making loading states on Twitter use the dominant color when an image is loading, instead of full gray. We ended up shipping that! Took like a year. Thanks for the quick email response about it, I think I asked because Pinterest did it.

I recently started collecting ships that come into Wellington like they’re Pokémon + messages in a bottle. I even draw little pixel art versions of each one so I can see them go all over the world on a map. My wife says she’s going to buy me a T-shirt that says OLD MAN HOBBIES

@kristy.bsky.social Hello! Saw your name pop up as a recommended account. Thank you for saying nice things about my writing in the past! 💙

Mere hours after Christine’s epic deep dive.. bsky.app/profile/dust... ..my Weird project partner @zicklag.katharos.group put out the first post in an ongoing series about #leafprotocol 🍂 blog.muni.town/leaf-atproto... Think of it like a Small World companion layer to the Big World #atproto.

In a few days, I’ll be speaking at @webdirections.bsky.social in Sydney about a topic near and dear to my heart. I don’t believe in blind optimism. I’m too pragmatic and realistic for that. So this talk is jam-packed with tangible examples of things (some already shipping) that will be a big deal.

For the last several years I’ve been working on Arbiter, an R&D lab exploring ways to fight disinformation. www.arbiter.space The name was inspired by working at Twitter and hearing people say “we don’t want to be the arbiter of truth.” Yes, but you can still do a lot better than doing nothing.

Ideas for labellers

I’ve been following Bluesky forever and lately I’m getting the spidey sense. Something big is happening.

I’m about to do a talk about the future of social media so I’m poking around Bluesky again. I have a whole section about labeling. Anyone open to chatting with me about how labeling works?

@jinxremoving.bsky.social I found your zine in Wellington. Just started reading now! 👋

Can someone point me to how to get started with Bluesky panels? I see the docs but I want to see practical stuff in the app. Like can I see a post, tag it as “awesome” and have my followers see that I think it’s awesome?

I was an early Bluesky fan, and still am! I drew up a whole comic about it, I used to work at Twitter, I was on the early Discord where ideas were being swapped, etc. My friend interviewed to work at Bluesky back when it was a fully Twitter thing. I’ve got history and love for the idea. 1/

Back after five months because I’m Brazilian apparently (I am not Brazilian, I am making a topical joke)

Back after a month

Back after many months

Back after many months

Retweet if you’re reading this Hee I’m going to be so famous

Little known fact: Twitter got rid of block once before, the way Musk is talking about now, back in 2013. It lasted 24 hours before getting reverted, because it’s an obviously horrible idea. https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/a/2013/reverting-the-changes-to-block-functionality.html

I went back to school and now I’m getting my masters of design, AMA Or give me advice

This is where I type a new post #viralcontent

I have a simple question about feed-generator as I type with my thumbs from bed without doing my own research: https://github.com/bluesky-social/feed-generator So when I do this, is it just a react app that I can host on Vercel, or is there more trickiness involved? Like containers? I’m bad at them

https://www.techdirt.com/2019/11/20/masnicks-impossibility-theorem-content-moderation-scale-is-impossible-to-do-well/ Yessss we finally have a name for it. Talk to anyone in the know, and they know this to be true.

Every time there’s a new social media clubhouse, there’s this utopian vision of “ok this time we’ll keep out the hateful people!” The world is not Star Wars and your enemies aren’t helpfully wearing black while you wear white to make it easy to understand who the “good guys” are.