From the moment Elon Musk brought Twitter (now X), the whole world went crazy. A lot of people are against Elon’s plans for the social media platform, but I am really interested to see what he’s up to. After all, we’re talking about a person who didn’t just create a whole bunch of awesome companies but also changed the way social media platforms generate their revenue.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it”, a few people had said to me when Elon Musk renamed Twitter to X, with plans to transform the platform into an “everything” app. Twitter, a drug for millions of users, is one of those apps that it’s the last thing they see before closing their eyes at night, and the first thing they see when they open them in the morning.
Everything that is happening in the world is being instantly uploaded on Twitter, from big events and news to people having the time of their lives. All my favourite content creators, celebrities, and artists are constantly uploading new content on X, sharing their thoughts and experiences, and a lot of them are also interacting with their fans, something that we do not see very often on other social media platforms.
“Renaming Twitter to X was the stupidest decision I’ve seen a man take,” a client’s wife told me a few days ago while we were implementing the new social media share buttons into their website. I can’t blame her, I like the name Twitter more than the word X, and it looked catchier than having two X in one share button. And we’re not the only two people who didn’t like the name change, but hey, what can we do, right?
X: An everything app and the future of social media
It will be interesting to see what Elon Musk’s plans are for X, and what other social media platforms will start to implement themselves, just like it happened with subscription plans and the verification mark. There were many times that Elon talked about his visions for X, and one of them was having an app that could handle everything, from your news content, social media, calls and video calls, to even payments.
But Musk isn’t just happy with simple payments, he wants to eliminate the use of the classic web banking apps, and let the users handle their whole finances from a single app. Articles are also along the way, and making it to the platform will probably drive more content creators into using the app.
And while there are other bigger things happening on the Internet, such as the Fediverse and Mastodon, they’re not really such a big deal for most common users, many of them not even knowing what a decentralized social media platform is. This is where X comes into play, staying a simple, easy-to-use, and full-of-news app that just works. People can easily sign up or log in and just start following, replying, and posting their own tweets (I’ll never stop calling them tweets).
It kinda reminds me of Spotify, a company that it seems to me they’re on a mission to become the world’s most hated company. They keep increasing their pricing, making all the wrong choices, yet people are still using the music streaming platform and it’s still the king of all. The same goes for X, and maybe Threads and BlueSky have managed to earn a few million users, but they’re still lacking in features.
Thread’s uninterested feed
If you used Meta’s Threads, then you already have a feeling of what I am about to say; The feed is absolutely the worst. I see nothing related to me, I don’t see many interesting posts, and it feels like Instagram but with more types of content. I’m constantly seeing people posting threads asking the algorithm itself to help them find the right audience, and women (or bots) trying everything to promote their accounts by posting almost naked photos.
Sometimes, I feel Threads is more like OnlyFans and less like X, and other times I find it just a spamming social media platform for people doing anything they can for a few new followers. But Thread’s feed is not the only uninteresting thing about the platform, as it also lacks features and options that I find difficult to use without. Take discovering, for example, the simplest and most basic thing a social media platform should already have implemented.
Have you ever tried to search on Threads? If you did, then you quickly found out that the platform has no “Discovery” page, doesn’t provide some popular hashtags to see what’s trending, and apart from users, searching for content on Threads is like going back to the dark ages. As much as I wanted to like Meta’s new platform, unfortunately, it’s not even close to competing with X (in my own mind, that is).
Then there’s the problem with trusting. I personally don’t trust Meta, and that’s based on hundreds of reports from well-known websites that I constantly reading all of those years. From selling their users’ data to having one court after another for security and privacy consorts, and even hearing about all the new lawsuits that the company keeps getting, it feels like something’s going totally wrong, and I don’t want to be part of it as a user.
BlueSky is the closest thing to Twitter
I liked BlueSky’s app a whole lot more than Threads. It’s more robust, it has a Discovery page that makes finding people and well-known accounts pretty straightforward, you can find the most popular topics with ease, and it seems people there are keeping things simple, just like the good old days on Twitter.
What I liked the most about BlueSky is the option to follow specific feeds, such as the “Science”, “Art”, “What’s Hot Classic”, and even “Birds” and “Cat Pics” feeds. The default news feeds go back to “Following”, so you can only see the posts of the people that you follow, without seeing unrelated content as it happens with Meta’s Threads. You also get the “Discover” and “For You” feeds, but like I said, you can add even more.
Weirdly, I don’t really like the name “BlueSky”, but I do like their logo, which again, reminds me of the good old days. Unfortunately, though, it lacks some features, including saving your favourite posts, which I think is a crucial feature. You can’t add your website to your profile’s page, and you cannot change the colours of the social media platform as you can do in X, which is a feature that I appreciate.
Then you get Lists, which is an amazing feature that lets you organize all of your followers into specific private lists that you created. This is a great way to only see the content that you absolutely want. For example, I have created a list with “SEO Experts”, “WordPress Experts”, “Scientists”, and even different lists for specific news websites and blogs that I follow and they’re on BlueSky.
Moreover, I started to quite like BlueSky, and I think this is currently the best X alternative and the best way to feel the nostalgia that you did years ago with Twitter. If they improve the UI of their app, provide a few more options and features (including the ability to create polls), and listen to their users, I think it has great potential.
Last but not least, for us writers, I do hope that Bluesky will make it easier to embed posts on our websites without having to visit their dedicated “Generate embeddable link previews to posts on Bluesky” page. Also, embeds currently feel like they are out of style, so improving their design will be a much-appreciated change for all of us bloggers.
By the way, you can follow TechWise Insider on Bluesky, as all of the content posted here will also be shared on Bluesky.
Conclusion: Should you leave X (Twitter) for Threads or Bluesky?
Bluesky looks like a strong option when it comes to a Twitter alternative, while Threads feels more like another move from Meta to keep dominating the social media platforms. And because everyone hates the algorithm behind Facebook and Instagram, I don’t expect to see something entirely different happening in Threads in the upcoming years.
Both Facebook and Instagram are working in a way that most content creators and businesses can’t see their audience grow, except if they spend a good amount of money advertising on both platforms. It’s hard even for your followers to see what you’re posting, and many of them do not even see new posts from pages they already follow. Instead, sponsored posts are everywhere, and I keep seeing content from other creators and businesses that I simply do not care about, follow, or ever mention.
This is the simplest reason why it’s not the right time to move over X. While you’re going to see content from people that you don’t follow, most of the tweets are pretty interesting, and everything that is happening is instantly shared on X. None of the people that I know of have moved over, and all of them tried Threads and stopped using it after a week or so.
I’m really interested to see what the future holds for all these platforms, what is X’s next moves if Threads is going to catch up, and if Bluesky will ever find a place in the top social media platforms.
Have you ever used Threads or Bluesky? Which one did you like the most? And what are your thoughts about X and Elon Musk’s ways of changing the platform to an “everything” app? Drop your comments in the section down below.
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