We’ve joined Bluesky!

Department of Food Science has joined the new social media site, Bluesky!

By: Emily Merlin

I woke up one morning with colleagues asking me if the Department of Food Science should join Bluesky. Bluesky was never in my vocabulary until that very morning. So I did the only thing any reasonable marketer would do: I went to Google. Google held nothing but positive reviews of the social media site. There was a max exodus (also known as “x-odus) from to the site since users no longer want to see endless ads.

NPR interviewed Jay Graber, the CEO of Bluesky, asking about the company will handle the increase of users and how it can and will benefit the people that use the site. Graber stated that Bluesky is “billionaire-proof” and that “the internet is just too controlled by a few powerful interest, and people don’t have the ability to control their own fate.”

Bluesky is “social media as it should be.” No more algorithms, no more ads taking up quality time in your feed, and it’s not designed by one single company. If you’ve seen what Bluesky looked like, you might be wondering “this look exactly like Twitter.” Well, you’d be correct, in a sense. According to the FAQ on Bluesky, “Bluesky was initially a project kicked off by Jack Dorsey when he was CEO of Twitter in 2019. Jack chose Jay [Graber] to lead Bluesky.”

However, at the end of 2022, Twitter decided to end the agreement with Bluesky, therefore making Bluesky it’s own entity. This hasn’t changed the initial mission to “develop and drive large-scale adoption of technologies for open and decentralized public conversation.” We look forward to what Bluesky holds for users in future.

Come see us on Bluesky: @uwmadisonfoodsci

Disclaimer: This is not a paid advertisement, but a personal opinion statement.