Building Our Own Bluesky Feeds
When we first wrote about Bluesky for the main blog, we included a bit about creating Feeds and our experiences with 3 of the available, no-code-needed Feed builders. On our first post for this blog, which is a mix of the 2 we wrote about the social media platform, we decided to focus only on the self-promoting. However, the blog's tagline does say 'social media mishaps', so it feels right to post it here, too.
FEED BUILDERS
Since there’s the possibility of creating Feeds without coding, we just had to try making our own Feed. It started more out of convenience - we wanted all the Horror and Fantasy posts in one place. At first we were pretty disappointed as the highest placed results for our google search on making Bluesky Feeds only explained how to make ones using lists of specific users and we wanted one that would look for words across the entire platform. However, we later managed to find what we were looking for. We’ve used 3 Feed builders so far - SkyFeed, track.goodfeeds, BlueskyFeeds. We’re still baffled by track.goodfeeds and fairly certain we screwed up with BlueskyFeeds though we’re not sure how. We’ve created 8 Feeds (well, 10, but we like to pretend the other 2 don’t exist), and had to put 2 out of their misery.
In theory, BlueskyFeeds looks perfect, as it allows you to set your Feed to search for up to 100 specific words or combinations of words. It can also search for hashtags, but that’s more limiting because most people seem to prefer the more generic ones and there are Feeds looking for those already. We tried to create a Feed dedicated to Sword and Sorcery that would look for word combinations related to the genre, like authors and characters’ names. Of the several attempts to do it, only one was successfully submitted to Bluesky, as the others were taking so long to upload that we just gave up. The one that did make it through never picked up any posts and when we checked it, it said we weren’t following enough people, which made no sense. Yes, there’s a filtering option that allows you to base it on one of those users lists, but we didn’t use that. We could’ve asked for tech assistance, but BlueskyFeeds is managed by one person who politely asks for ko-fi donations if possible to help with it and we kinda felt bad about asking for help for free (we’re a little strapped for cash). Therefore, we just deleted it.
The possibility of managing the Feed we created puts it well above track.goodfeeds, though. We created 2 Feeds using it and they’re still floating around because there’s nothing we can do. Unlike the Feeds made with the other 2 builders, the track.goodfeeds ones aren’t linked to their creators and simply turn up on Bluesky as 'by track.goodfeeds'. There’s no way to add a description, either, or an avatar. The first was an imperfect attempt at a Sword and Sorcery Feed, which simply looked for 'Sword And Sorcery' and 'Conan the Barbarian'. We could’ve added up to 3 search words/word combinations, but we honestly thought we’d be able to go back and edit it - we were wrong. We figured we had made a mistake and locked ourselves out of the Feed editor or something, so we thought that if we made yet another Feed we’d be able to get back in - wrong again. This Feed was focused on Conan the Barbarian, and apart from the eponymous character, it searched for 'Sword And Sorcery' and 'Red Sonja'. As soon as we hit publish, it was gone. This time we didn’t logout and searched frantically for any way to access the newly created Feed - there wasn’t one. Oh, and how accurate is it? Well, it looked like everything was working well until it picked a post about a barbarian werewolf that had no other keywords apart from 'barbarian'… This is why, when Bluesky proudly announced there were more than 40 thousand active Feeds, the first thing we thought was that many of them were likely track.goodfeeds Feeds that existed solely because the people who made them couldn’t delete them. We were surprised to find out most of them had been made with SkyFeed, which does allow you to edit and delete them. However, judging by the malfunctioning ones we’ve spotted, we wonder if the people making Feeds are serial Feed makers that keep churning out new ones without caring about what happens to them, filling the Feed zone with useless crap? Yeah, we’re not so sure Bluesky should be flaunting those stats.
Well, we aren’t negligent parents and take good care of our Feed babies (that weren’t ripped from us by the unfathomable rules of track.goodfeeds). The ones that do work and turn up on our Profile were made with SkyFeed, which uses blocks. The Feeds can look for keywords, phrases, and hashtags, however, anyone creating a Fantasy Feed should probably stick to hashtags or they may end up with some very awkward posts in there. When we set up the Folk Horror Feed, we used keywords because no one was using #folkhorror. We thought that this meant that it looked for that specific word combination, but it actually picks up any post containing 'folk' and 'horror', and not necessarily in that order. Thankfully, those words don’t occur together very often, so it’s going well. Like we mentioned in the previous post, choosing what to look for isn’t the only thing you can do - you can also exclude words and even whole lists of users with the RegEx (by ticking the Inverse box) and Remove blocks respectively. Like BlueskyFeeds, SkyFeed allows you to add an avatar and we made some cool ones (at least we think they look cool) using Canva graphics. We also managed to pin a post to the top of each Feed with instructions on how it works for all the people too lazy to check the About tab. We’re so proud of our ability to follow simple instructions and copy/paste links! Below you can see the Feeds and their respective avatars:
Horror + Fantasy Books
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:c37zusmv6xwz45wm4waqbdaf/feed/aaako3jnowdeq
Horror + SFF TV
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:c37zusmv6xwz45wm4waqbdaf/feed/aaagoqnrh3ucw
Folk Horror
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:c37zusmv6xwz45wm4waqbdaf/feed/aaak2x34ocuom
Folk Horror (hashtag)
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:c37zusmv6xwz45wm4waqbdaf/feed/aaaa6rpak66cm
Blogging
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:c37zusmv6xwz45wm4waqbdaf/feed/aaaocfac2ak7s
Eurovision (w/ hashtags) 💀
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:c37zusmv6xwz45wm4waqbdaf/feed/aaapxnrzvgxvc
Horror + Fantasy Books is pretty self-explanatory and also picks up hashtags for Weird Fiction and Cosmic Horror. It used to be called Genre Reads, but then we realized that with that name it wasn't turning up when you searched for book-related Feeds. The TV one is the third attempt at creating a TV-oriented Feed, but it's pretty much dead. It picks up #horrortv #horrortvseries #horrortvshow + fantasy and sci-fi variants, so they're not exactly obscure hashtags; except, we're practically the only ones that use them, so if we're not posting to it, it's empty. This time, however, we won't be deleting anything. We ended up created another Folk Horror Feed to pick up #folkhorror because people started using that more. The last one created was Blogging, which like the first Folk Horror feed picks up keywords (in this case, 'blogging'). In this case wasn't just because not everyone was using hashtags but because we realized that with keywords it also picked up 'microblogging'.
We've now deleted the Eurovision one, which was created specifically for this year's Eurovision Song Contest to make sure we didn't miss a thing and also could remove some very nasty stuff from both sides from it. We actually prepared for it by checking this and the other, bigger Eurovision Feed for accounts to exclude in advance and made a whole list! If only we were this organized when handling everything else. By the way, live posting on Bluesky doesn't work very well, at least using the Feeds. They take too long to refresh. At first we thought that it was due to all the filters, but even after we removed them for a while, it stayed the same. We didn't try clicking on the hashtag directly, like we do on Twitter, because the goal was to follow as many as possible, but maybe that would refresh quicker? Of course, Twitter attracted a lot more crazies, so maybe it all balanced out in the end.
We tried making more Feeds, but it’s very difficult to pick good topics. Anything art based will be dominated by Furry art and many artists don’t even use hashtags. We briefly flirted with the idea of creating one dedicated to erotica, but the stuff that turned up was a little much. One account that stood out was posting links to some Teen Wolf fanfic with clearly AI-generated images that were the stuff of nightmares. We’ve never watched Teen Wolf, but we’re fairly certain that the characters didn’t look like anorexic teen scarecrows. So, yeah, we won’t be building any more Feeds.
HASHTAGS
With so many people clamouring for clickable hashtags, we thought that once they were introduced, people would use them more, which would help the Feeds. However, there are still too many people who don't use them and it's been getting worse. It's not entirely surprising, as that has also happened on Twitter. Our newly rechristened Horror + Fantasy Books Feed is a pretty dismal sight at the moment because of course the people who use them more regularly are self-promoters. We don't mind a few posts once in a while, but without other people using hashtags, that's nearly all we see. Also, Bluesky makes it very easy to mute a hashtag, which makes hashtag abuse a bigger problem, as a bunch of people can end up losing engagement because of a few idiots.
