imaginima/Getty Images
Joining a new social network in 2024 is an odd, lonely, quiet experience. By now, most social networkers have established communities online. But if those communities were on Twitter (now known as X), they may have died off.
We follow, and are followed by, a relatively large number of people on Facebook and LinkedIn. Your followers may be true friends, business colleagues, family members, fans, and other constituents.
Also: 5 reasons to try Twitter rival Bluesky (no invite needed)
Over on X, things have gotten a lot more fraught since the presidential election. Because X’s current owner has close ties to one of the sides in America’s rather boisterous political debate, folks aligned with the other side have started to bail, mostly for Bluesky. Bluesky has seen 500% growth since the election.
I haven’t left X, and have no immediate intention to do so. Unlike many of my friends and colleagues, who complain about the large flow of political content on X, I haven’t seen it. I’ve been careful about who I connect with on my socials, and long ago unfriended those who spew political diatribe. Of course, I also maintain an active presence on Bluesky and all the other socials, which we’ll discuss throughout this article.
Also: How to migrate from X to Bluesky without losing your followers
When you join a new social network, you’re starting afresh. Yes, a few of your friends might have invited you to join, so you might have a core group you’re still familiar with, but it’s still quiet.
I used to have regular dialogs with my many Twitter followers. I still have a large followership, but there’s no dialog. Unlike when it was Twitter, X is very much of a ghost town in terms of good conversation about tech issues. That conversation hasn’t moved to the other services. It’s just shut down. I miss that conversation.
I’m also disturbed by how some social networks seem to have developed political identities, with more users of one affiliation gravitating to one network or the other.
Over the past year, I have dabbled in Bluesky, Threads, and T2, which became Pebble, which then died. I also joined Mastodon, which is more of a decentralized social network. None of them have achieved anything resembling the level of vibrancy of Twitter before it was nuked.
Also: How to use Bluesky Social: Everything to know about the popular X alternative
Although your mileage may vary, I’ve found that Facebook and LinkedIn seem to have maintained a bit more of an interactive community, especially within individual Facebook groups. However, neither of these networks seems to have the immediacy and global connection that Twitter (when it was Twitter) once had.
Instagram is still Instagram, but it’s not really a text-oriented social network, so, like YouTube and TikTok, I’m not including it in this article’s discussion. I’ve started seeing more and more activity on my YouTube channel, but that’s almost entirely about my project work.
The Bluesky community
I joined Bluesky when I got an invite from one of my tech press colleagues. I knew about 20 other people on Bluesky, also in the tech press, so I followed them. A few of them followed me back. Bluesky is no longer invitation-only. My followership stayed quite low for a while, but recently started to increase — probably due to the Twitter exodus.
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
Despite posting every article and newsletter I write to Bluesky, my followership has grown to 779 people, compared to the 22,000-plus or so I have on X. Interestingly, my followership has increased by more than 3,000 on X in the past year.
Also: 7 things to know about Bluesky before you join – and why you should
On Twitter, the community once felt like a bustling metropolis and now, as X, it feels like a post-apocalyptic metropolis. On Bluesky, the community feels like homeroom.
The Threads community
Threads, Meta’s bid to unseat Twitter, is another social media example. Threads is tightly integrated into Instagram, so much so that my Instagram profile picture and description were automatically moved into Threads:
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
As you can see, I have 340 followers. The needle hasn’t moved much. I had 122 followers when I had four posts up on the service, and now that I have a few hundred, I’ve added a little over 200 followers. The desktop version doesn’t show how many people I follow. But it is possible to find out the size of your community by clicking the phone app, then the heart icon, and then the little icon at the top of the screen under All. Yes, it’s convoluted.
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
Then, you can click a tab to see how many followers you have and how many you follow (I follow 108). There are also a bunch of folks in pending.
Also: I’ve used social networks since the 80s. Threads is the most annoying one I’ve tried
Writing this, I was initially a bit baffled by where all these follows and followers came from. But ZDNET’s Lance Whitney explains that on setup, you can follow the same accounts you follow on Instagram. I must have done this. But since not all those Instagram accounts are on Threads, the people I’m following on Instagram who have not set up their Threads are listed as Pending (including the names of a few friends who are no longer with us).
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
I described Twitter as feeling like a city and Bluesky as feeling like a homeroom, at least in terms of the size of my following community. Threads, with a following community of a few hundred, doesn’t feel like anything. Maybe it’s because it’s all phone-based, but I don’t get any vibe at all.
Also: Changing this phone setting instantly made the Threads app better for me
Most people I follow have posted the obligatory “I’m here” post, and a few additional ones, but my feed isn’t nearly as relevant to me (more on that below) as the feeds from Facebook or Instagram. Threads needs time to age. I guess it could become interesting eventually.
On the other hand, The Verge writes “Threads grew by a Bluesky this month”, suggesting the number of signups for Threads this month alone is about the same as the total number of Bluesky users. So, in short, Threads is also getting its fair share of Twitter/X refugees.
Then there’s Mastodon
While you can read a master feed of everyone you follow on Mastodon, your social feed runs on one individual server.
Also: Mastodon isn’t Twitter but it’s glorious
If you want a Mastodon account, you must set one up on a specific server.
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
If you don’t like the server you signed up for, you can move your followers to a new server. But you can’t move any of your content. Mastodon supports content export, but not content import, so you need to choose well.
Also: How to get started with Mastodon
The problem is that joining a Mastodon server feels a lot like joining a homeowner’s association. There are some open servers, but there are also a lot of servers where you have to apply for membership and support the group rules. In a sense, this is more like Facebook groups than Twitter.
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
I did apply to a few servers that seemed interesting, but didn’t hear back from a few, and got turned down by one. They didn’t like some articles I wrote and didn’t want me to be a member of their community. Bummer, dude.
I eventually signed up for the main server, Mastodon.social. So, if you want to follow me there, I’m at @[email protected]. And yeah, Mastodon social addresses are longer and more complicated because the server has to be attached to your profile name.
Also: How to join a Mastodon server with the official Android app
I should state that many of my tech journalism colleagues seem drawn to Mastodon, so if you’re more inclined toward the interest-based community approach Mastodon offers, give it a try.
Bluesky vs. Threads vs. Mastodon
Bluesky feels like a mostly complete service. Threads started off feeling unfinished but is getting more polished. Both of these have some heavy-hitter backing. Bluesky was started by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. Here’s the company’s description of its founding:
Bluesky was initially a project kicked off by Jack Dorsey when he was CEO of Twitter in 2019. Jack chose Jay to lead Bluesky, and Twitter paid Bluesky services income to build an open social protocol for public conversation that it could someday become a client on. Bluesky has been an independent company since its formation in 2021.
In late 2022, Twitter chose to sever the service agreement with Bluesky, and Bluesky agreed. The Bluesky PBLLC has continued to pursue its original founding mission to “develop and drive large-scale adoption of technologies for open and decentralized public conversation.”
Threads, of course, is backed by Meta/Facebook/Instagram, which means it has a lot of runway and resources.
Bluesky has a full mobile and desktop environment. Threads has a mobile environment with most of the necessary functionality, and the desktop web environment has improved since last summer. You can now post and browse your feed.
This capability may not matter for people who post selfies when they’re out and about. However, for those of us who curate our posts or post links to stories we write or find interesting, Bluesky is definitely the winner. It’s much harder to curate a social media strategy solely on the phone. To be fair, Instagram has owned its segment of the market with a very phone-centric app, but although it has reach, the network is inconvenient for professional social media users.
Also: Is Bluesky down for you? Explosive growth leads to inevitable outages
Bluesky has one feed that’s just made up of the people you follow, and another that’s called What’s Hot. That’s a general list populated by posts with higher engagement. The level of discussion is much more in keeping with the sorts of things I might be interested in. This makes sense because the few people I currently follow on Bluesky are people who say interesting things. Bluesky is also starting to offer curated lists, so you might be able to sign up to follow all of ZDNET’s journalists, for example.
As for Threads, I have no idea what is going through Meta’s collective mind. It appears that the Home feed consists of whatever Threads wants to feed. As such, I got Paris Hilton (she’s still around?) and a Kardashian (not, apparently, to be confused with a Cardassian) in my Home feed. There was no profanity, so that’s something.
However, with a feed like that, I find Threads worthless as a source of information. Because I’m a completionist at heart, I post links to my articles on it, but I’m much more likely to ignore Threads until it’s possible to separate the wheat from the Kardashian.
Also: How to migrate from X to Bluesky without losing your followers
If you find a Mastodon server you like, then you might enjoy staying mostly in that community. Since I’m already involved in way too many groups and communities, I haven’t dug into the server-based Mastodon experience. It’s a little different from other social networks. You don’t like something, you favorite it (by clicking a star icon). Only the poster knows you favorited a post. So, you can’t see how many likes a post has.
Had Twitter not launched first, I think Mastodon might have been huge. But since it’s a late-to-the-party substitute solution that’s a little more complex and less inclusive than Twitter, it’s probably destined to be a bit of an edge system for the foreseeable future. That’s not to say there’s nothing to like, because it’s a nice place to be. But Mastodon is not going to take Twitter’s place as the voice of the online community.
I frankly doubt anything will. Twitter may well have been of a time and place, and we may never see its like again.
My recommendation
Bluesky has the most potential. I’ve yet to see a discussion I feel compelled to participate in, but many of the items posted are interesting. As for Threads, it’s an app on my phone that’s hanging on by a thread. I’ve been using it for six months and it just doesn’t seem any more compelling. Mastodon seems to be clomping its big ol’ pachyderm feet at a measured pace, but it’s solid enough.
That’s the key takeaway, I think: let’s check back in again in six months. Remember that LinkedIn and Facebook are positively ancient compared to these alternate solutions. Twitter/X, for all its faults and weird changes, was battle-tested, but it has been heavily abandoned and now has the taint of politics. Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads are barely out of their diapers.
Also: How to manage Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads all from one free app
Give them time. Both the Meta team and Dorsey and the team he’s put together “get” social networking. They’ve been there. They’ve done that. Expect most of the complaints and massive annoyances to go away, except the few things we find annoying that the dev teams may have decided to bake into their business models, like whatever monetization schemes both will surely come up with.
It certainly doesn’t hurt to sign up for an account and claim your name. Give each service whatever attention you can spare. But give them time and don’t take them all that seriously. Yet.
What about you? Are you on Bluesky or Threads? What has your experience been? Do you expect to migrate away from Twitter to one or the other? What about Mastodon? Is its approach to walled garden social media something that appeals to you? Let us know in the comments below.
You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly update newsletter on Substack, and follow me on Twitter at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.
