Without question or exception, the best social media experience I ever had was Xanga. I was on Xanga for years, and my arrival on BlueSky brings that medium to mind. Xanga existed before microblogging became a thing, so posts and engagement there were more long-form. Connection wasn't algorithmic, 'cause this was back in the day, kids. You searched for and chose areas of interest yourself, and assembled your own networks. There was no blocking, because, well, you couldn't. So, sure, there were trolls, but they couldn't hide. Troll someone, and they could see your profile, as could everyone in a group.
There were no bots, because in 2004, bad actors hadn't figured out how to do that yet. There was no tracking or gathering of data on users, because, again, that wasn't yet a thing. There were no ads, because the internet was young and free and wild. The content on a person's Xanga was mostly their own writing.
It was, to be honest, a pleasure. You really got to know people as people, and even the neoatheists and fundamentalists I jousted with became friends of a sort. It's been nearly twenty years, and I am still in conversation with some of the souls I connected with there.
But Xanga died, because...well...there was no way for it to stay in operation. There was no revenue, and no plan for revenue. No ads. No subscription. No harvesting the activities of users to sell to advertisers. When Facebook rose and started sucking in the users, things began to go south. Decreasing participation meant less venture capital, 'cause there wasn't any way to pretend it could be sustainable. They tried a subscription model, but it failed. They tried a reboot, but it failed. It was a beautiful dream while it lasted, but it never found a path to long term viability.
As millions upon millions of users flee the propagandistic shores of X and the now-aggressively-censorious algorithms of Facebook, the challenge facing BlueSky is the same. It's great. I mean, a lovely place to connect. Again, it reminds me of Xanga.
And not just in the good ways. There is no publicly stated path to BlueSky viability. Servers and moderators and infrastructure require an income stream, and scaling up from an experiment in federation to a sustainable platform will demand resources. It's all buzzybuzzbuzz right now, but it'll need more than butterfly farts and biz-speak daydreams to keep it afloat.
A good social media platform is, I will note, worth paying for. The subscription model is the single best way to ensure adequate revenue for that form of social exchange. It guarantees platform stability, and is ultimately less predatory than the Meta model of viewing the data of your users as your product. It also adds a transaction cost that limits botfarm incursions and gives a traceable trail to trolls and predators.
Alternately, it could lean into federation, becoming a more user-friendly version of the sprawling mess that is Mastodon.
What's the plan? Well, for now there isn't one, at least not one that's been shared.
I do hope it succeeds, but in the meantime, kids: don't get too attached.
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