There are plenty of invites going around. I've been on Bluesky for about a month now and have gotten half a dozen invites.

The thing that is, however, making Bluesky a genuinely pleasant place to hang out, even despite its size (it's getting relatively large for pleasantness!) is that the invite code system requires that, even with that large number of invite codes, somebody wants to see your posts. It is a pretty strong high-pass filter; they're just scarce enough to value giving them to folks who are going to make for interesting reading.

If you wouldn’t mind sending an invite my way, I’d appreciate it. [email protected] Thanks in advance!

Appreciate an invite if you have one, thx

> Somebody wants to see your posts

Unless you buy an invite code on eBay.

I could’ve been selling codes this whole time?

Usually at risk a ban, buuuuut....

Been trying to find one through Twitter but haven't had any luck, would super appreciate an invite!

If you happen to have another invite I'd really appreciate one!

> not cool enough.

I got in. Bluesky is exciting and exclusive, but I assure you that its popular users are not cool. Unless you think deviant, ultra left-wing, terminally-online people are cool. There are normal people too, but any decently-sized thread gets polluted.

"Deviant" is, in this context, almost certainly a code word for "trans".

Own what you mean. Be bold.

On the other hand Nostr is instantaneous to join, no email required either.

Edit: start on https://hamstr.to/home

Then: click the door icon at the bottom, and create account.

Then: find people to follow. (How can I find people to follow? How can I add them to my hamster?)

Apologies for the cold boot problem I picked the first web link I found. Some clients keep their way to offer recommendations.

See one list here: https://github.com/aitechguy/nostr-address-book Having a starting point and seeing accounts interacting it'll be easier to pick up the ones that interest you.

Check out more at https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr

I have a couple extras ... Are you at least somewhat cool?

I don't know about cool, but if my username dot com is amusing enough to qualify I've been curious to check it out.

I’d appreciate one if you still have spare

Would appreciate if you can spare me one. Been waiting forever for the elusive "official" invite directly from them.

* * *

Yeah, I'm really not a fan of this sort of rate limited invite system. I think it will hurt the eventual growth of these services.

@blitzar I don't know you, so please forgive my assumptions here...but, you're cool enough that you don't need to wait for bluesky to send you an invite...You don't need them. In fact, if anything, they're artificially creating the scarcity, because the fact is: they need you more. Instead, take a plunge into the the Fediverse, where you can make your own party and you do the inviting of others...or join others on some instance that has open invites, and open (virtual) arms. Think of bluesky or other silos like a single apartment party. Maybe its cool and if you dig it, then that's cool; you do you. But, the greater fediverse - where mastodon and other networks live - is like a major awesome block party of multiple apartments, and all of them spilling their parties out into the street mixing fun up in all sorts of ways. But, no pressure, and fuss no muss. Remember: they need you more than you need their invite. ;-)

Can you see off-instance replies to a post yet?

How about quote toot?

Thse are unfair questions, because I know the answer to them, but it demonstrates why Mastodon is unfit for the kind of chatter that Twitter excelled at and Bluesky is trying to inherit. You can't overhear stuff on Mastodon, and that has two chilling factors: one, it makes it feel like a deep echoing well unless you follow everybody you might want to talk to (thus making your signal-to-noise ratio plummet; Twitter was always better with fewer follows, so long as they engaged with people you didn't follow too--Bluesky is similar), and two, it encourages reply-guying because your Very Thoughtful Response doesn't look like it's been preempted.

Bluesky owns, actually, because they get that shitposting is the fun part of social media, and they built a thing that's good for it. They've made mistakes--quite a few of them--but they have the core of something that the Mastodon developers and ActivityPub standardization folks more generally really should look at. Because, as it stands, when you evangelize for "the fediverse", you're asking people who expect one thing to come to an offering that is drastically less of That Thing (in the good ways; much less so the bad) than the one from which they left.

Excellent points @eropple! The fediverse - or at least many stacks/implementatins/apps - does lack some features of twitter or bluesky, etc.; but, the omissions tend to be by design. So, your points about my assuming that everyone's expectations are the same is valid. I should have been more clear, and noted that expectations should be different on the Fedi side of things. My intent was to show the OP that they should feel free to, well, feel empowered, and not feel like they need to be at the whim of some corporate entity - considering there exists technology that can give that person some more freedom and at least some mechanisms to engage with other humans, etc. But, your points are valid: the experience is different. For me, i rather like the purposeful constraints of the Fediverse, but of course it might not be for everyone; that's true. ;-)

It's Google+ fiasco all over again. Why are they so arrogant and think ppl will just to beg to use it? I think threads just wins because the competitors are so incompetent

Gmail was also like this. Creating scarcity and learning hard lessons without ruining reputation in front of the whole internet is very smart.

I am rooting for bluesky simply because they have been making good strategic decisions like this and have actual commerical backing.