Some Thoughts About Bluesky and Mastodon

May 2, 2025

There are two social media platforms I’m active on these days1: Bluesky and Mastodon. I don’t keep them separate; I have the same name on both and often crosspost things between them.

Back in the old days, on Twitter, I mostly just followed artists I liked. When the time came to leave, I set up on Mastodon and later Bluesky with the goal of doing the same thing.

Despite having the same goals, my accounts on those two platforms has diverged. The specific community of artists I was interested in is frankly not much on Mastodon. They’re all on Bluesky. Most of the people who are on Mastodon are also on Bluesky.

Meanwhile on Mastodon it’s been moving more and more towards Indie Web folks. And it’s the reverse situation with them. There’s a few that I follow in both places, but that I see much more of on Mastodon.

I have more followers on Bluesky than I do on Mastodon2, but when I share my blogposts I get much more traffic from Mastodon3. I get more replies on my toots than my skeets4.

There’s plenty of discussion about the differences in underlying technologies and funding models between the two. I’ve even remarked on it myself. But at the end of the day they are both social networks. And the biggest immediate difference to me as a user is the people who are there to socialize with, as well as the kinds of conversations they are having. The other things do matter, but the people are first. For me, neither has been better or worse in that respect, it’s just two different crowds.

  1. Well, it depends on what you count as “social media platform”. I’m on Discord too, but that’s a different kind of thing—or at least it feels like one. This site here is also a platform. It has media on it. But somehow that doesn’t seem to count. ↩︎

  2. 142 to 42, a difference of exactly a hundred, at the time of writing. ↩︎

  3. Mastodon doesn’t send referer information, so I don’t know exactly how many clicks each post gets (Oh no, what a tragedy /s) but I’ve watched my traffic for long enough to be able to infer that it is a greater amount. ↩︎

  4. “toot” and “skeet” are terms the for a post used on Mastodon and Bluesky respectively. I don’t really like either. I’m in favor of just calling everything a “tweet.” For one, if Elon Musk doesn’t want Twitter’s branding I’m happy to take it from him. For two, genericizing trademarks is hilarious. ↩︎

Likes: 1,000,000