The Battle for the New Bird App

If you’re active on social media platforms your mind has probably been spinning the last few weeks as everyone scrambles to figure out where to go now that T-W-I-T-T-E-R is a dumpster fire thanks to a new owner who shall remain nameless. Let’s talk about alternatives, shall we?

HIVE SOCIAL

When it was announced the bird app would have a new owner back in November 2022, many fled to Hive.

Hive is an app that isn’t an exact clone of the bird app. It mixes those features with Instagram and even throws in some parts of Myspace that us Millennials remember such as picking your favorite song on your profile. Hive had a lot of promise, however, it couldn’t handle the influx of followers when everyone did a mass exodus towards it. It crashed and by the time it was back up weeks later, everyone had moved on. Hive is a no for me.

MASTODON

Mastodon works like a microblogging site.

Around the same time Hive took off (for five seconds), Mastodon was also reaching new heights. Unlike the bird app, this app works more like a microblogging site. Mastodon offers features like hashtags, replies, bookmarking and retweet-like “boosting.” But unlike the bird app, the network is ad-free and distributed across thousands of servers organized around interests and geographic regions, run largely by volunteers who join their individual systems together in a federation. Once they sign up and pick a server via the web or a mobile client, Mastodon users can swap posts and links with others on their own server as well as users on other servers across the network. Each server can choose to limit or filter out undesirable types of content, such as harassment and gratuitous violence, while users on any server can block and report others to administrators. This is a feature that I am a fan of, especially after what’s going on over on T-bird app lately. Unfortunately, the bookish community (authors, publishers, librarians, bloggers/reviewers, educators, etc.) never really migrated over there. So Mastodon is a pass for me.

BLUE SKY

Bluesky is a decentralized social app conceptualized by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and developed in parallel with Twitter.

The more recent competition for the bird app come in the form of Blue Sky. This one popped up a week or so ago as another alternative to T-bird and everyone jumped on quickly. Unfortunately, like Clubhouse when it started, Blue Sky requires an invite code. Having been on it for over a week, I still have 0 invite codes. I recently found out you only get one invite code every 2 weeks! It was only thanks to another librarian that I got on myself.

Once invited, users create a handle which is then represented as @username.bsky.social as well as a display name that appears more prominent in bold text. I find the handle to be too long. The app itself functions much like a bare-bones T-bird, where you can click a plus button to create a post of 256 characters, which can also include photos. Posts themselves can be replied to, retweeted, liked and, from a three-dot menu, reported, shared via the iOS Share Sheet to other apps, or copied as text.

Many in the bookish community headed there and one user said it’s a great place to vent, while the newest app, Threads, is more for professional use. We will see…

THREADS

Instagram’s answer to the bird app

Enter Threads. This app, because it’s connected to Instagram and has the backing of Meta and Zuckerberg, is getting the most traction I’ve seen to compete with the bird app. It’s easy to join; you can simply connect your Instagram account to the Threads app and import your bio and followers/following. The notifications were so crazy the first day I added it that I had to mute them as everyone fled to Threads to join. One of the downsides is that if you join Threads and want to delete it, it will also delete your Instagram so join with caution.

There are buttons to like, repost, reply to or quote a thread. The number of likes and replies on each post is displayed below its content. Accounts can be public or private. So far, it seems like Threads might be the biggest alternative to T-bird and I’m ready for it.

Which will you be using? Let me know and follow me on all platforms: @thenextgenlibrarian