I don’t think I need to make this super public (and no one reads this anyways, it is for me), like the evergreen post on reddit about someone quitting facebook, but I am reporting back that I am enjoying the Bluesky enough to stay. It definitely doesn’t have the same mass spec proteomics community I had on Twitter, and that’s fine (maybe better as I want to hear the voices I am missing either due to an algorithm or just competition with “big” names). I have found new voices and communities, and so far am following more non-proteomics scientists as well. Its a nerd convention and I love it. The same could be said for Mastodon, but again, these Bluesky feeds are what make it work for me (I still go there btw, just to check on Phil, Dave, Wout, and Ron basically). On Bluesky I can follow scientists from all over, but with a simple click browse proteomics and mass spec posts specifically in whatever sorting order I wish.
If Altmetric ever decides to back a horse, I think that will easily be the SciTwitter alternative.
Which brings me to my reason for writing this: I wanted to put links for specific key things (beyond my last post on coming over from Twitter):
- BlueSky for Scientists - includes a nice little feature tracker to see that gifs and dms are in the works
- List of Science Feeds
- BlueSky invite code to request or donate for scientists
Feeds to know (I will add to this):
- ProteomicSky is chronological
- ProteomicSky-Hot is last 3 days sorted by likes
- MassSpecSky is a really good feed by ASMS
- MassSpecHelp respun MassSpecSky and ProteomicSky to collect posts asking for help for all things mass spec. Use #massSOS or if you forget, it should find any combo of mass spec-y terms + help or SOS or hivemind or consult. Sorting is chronological.
- For You I don’t understand this one exactly, but it is my go to before the default feeds of “Popular with Friends” and “Discover”
- Any custom feed I make on a whim (make a conference one, make one for all the preprints, make one that just shows me what my follows are liking, etc.)
It can be quiet here and I hope I don’t spam everyone too hard. Even when it is quiet, picking up all the proteomics bioRxiv preprints is super fun (and something to note as bioRxiv expands deliberately into Bluesky and Mastodon). Overall it reminds me of how SciTwitter felt c.2018: wasn’t a ton of us, didn’t seem quite as insane, definitely less ads, and it was fine. Still, there aren’t all the non-science things (pop culture, sports, etc) to pepper in my science party, which stinks, but for me I just randomly pop over to Threads for that (gasp!).
I may add more here later.