So you’ve got lastly determined to stop X. If the boosting of paid blue checks and monetized hate did not do it, and the silly identify change did not do it, perhaps the current announcement of plans to basically eradicate blocking was the final straw to get you to ditch the previous Twitter.
That appears to have been the case for at the very least 500,000 individuals who determined to enroll to turn into X-pats within the wake of the blocking announcement. That is what number of new customers have since joined Bluesky, the decentralized social media app that originated as an in-house Twitter product and is now one in all the perfect and fastest-growing options to what all of us used to affectionately name the “hellsite” (earlier than the identify turned actually apt).
There’s only one drawback: How one can discover the gang of followers and followees you spent years cultivating on the Different Website, so you do not really feel such as you’re posting into the void. Effectively, there’s an extension for that.
Sky Follower Bridge makes switching to Bluesky straightforward
I signed up for Bluesky shortly after everybody first began freaking out about Elon taking on Twitter, again when it was nonetheless invite-only. Sadly, although a number of individuals I adopted there talked about going to Bluesky, nobody truly appeared to be utilizing all of it that a lot, and trying to find and including individuals to observe was a time-consuming endeavor. So I largely did not use it, and felt caught within the quagmire, wanting to go away X however not desirous to lose contact with all these people.
Lately, that is not a difficulty due to Sky Follower Bridge, an extension for Chromium browsers, Firefox, and GitHub that makes it, if not seamless, then at the very least a lot much less tedious to seek out your crew at Bluesky.
This is the way it works: As soon as you’ve got added the extension, head to your X profile and click on on the hyperlink for the listing of individuals you are following. As soon as on that web page, open up the Sky Follower Bridge extension out of your browser’s toolbar. A popup will seem that can immediate you to log in to your Bluesky account, so have that username and password helpful.
Credit score: Screenshot by Joel Cunningham
As soon as you’ve got logged in, the popup will start populating an inventory of individuals you observe on X who’ve matching Bluesky accounts, primarily based on a trio of parameters you possibly can click on on or off: Identical deal with identify (that means the individual makes use of the identical @ on each websites), Identical show identify (that means the identify that shows on their profile, no matter their @), and Included deal with identify in description (for individuals who have added their Bluesky deal with to their X profile).
Credit score: Screenshot by Joel Cunningham
From there, you possibly can scroll via the listing and select which people you need to observe on Bluesky—and doing so is as straightforward as clicking a button from inside the extension. There isn’t any “choose all” choice, so that you do should undergo and select individuals one after the other, however I discovered this solely took a couple of minutes, even with greater than 200 matches, and it gave me an opportunity to pare down my following listing, which received fairly bloated over the 15 years (ugh) I used to be on X/Twitter.
As soon as you’ve got gone via the listing of individuals you are following, click on again to X and swap tabs to the listing of people that observe you and run via the train once more.
Discovering your fellow refugees this fashion is not essentially an actual science, as you may solely see matches for individuals who have truly shared both their show identify or deal with throughout providers or put their Bluesky identify of their X bio, however as of late it looks like most individuals use the identical identifiers throughout a number of websites, so your success fee ought to be fairly first rate.
Personally, I discovered a number of hundred of each my followers and other people I observe on X over on Bluesky, and all of a sudden my feed there appears much more vibrant—which makes it that a lot simpler to remain off of X.
The idea of using an extension to bridge followers from X to Bluesky is a clever solution. It makes the switch less daunting for users who have built extensive networks on the previous platform.
I appreciate the detailed explanation of how the Sky Follower Bridge works. It’s reassuring to know that there are tools available that facilitate this transition without losing touch with important connections.
Transitioning from one platform to another can be quite frustrating. This article does a good job of outlining a practical method to find and connect with followers on Bluesky, which is essential for continuity.
The sudden influx of users moving to Bluesky is noteworthy. With tools like the Sky Follower Bridge, it might encourage more users to explore this new platform while keeping their existing networks intact.
It’s interesting to see how many users are transitioning from X to Bluesky. The Sky Follower Bridge seems like a helpful tool for those wanting to maintain their social connections during this change.