Social networking startup Bluesky is rolling out certainly one of customers’ most in-demand options — no, not an edit button! — bookmarks.
The corporate on Monday introduced the brand new addition, which it calls Saved Posts. The characteristic is accessible by a brand new bookmark icon beneath every put up, subsequent to the guts for favoriting.
Your saved posts can then be considered at any time from the brand new “Saved” part within the app’s most important navigation.
Whereas it could appear redundant to have each likes and bookmarks on a social app since each supply a option to mark a put up to be referenced later, bookmarks supply a personal various to the “like.” On Bluesky, your account and its related knowledge are public, which suggests your likes are additionally public. That doesn’t work for everybody, as some stuff you save are private, or just aren’t the varieties of stuff you need to publicly promote.
Journalists, for instance, might save posts they intention to reference later, however don’t essentially need to broadcast that they’ve simply began wanting into one thing, which might invite undesirable consideration. Others might merely need to bookmark their favourite grownup content material.
On X, Elon Musk realized that the general public nature of likes might really lower engagement, which prompted the corporate last year to hide users’ likes. In line with X staff on the time, public likes might incentivize the improper habits, as individuals might really feel discouraged from liking content material which may be “edgy,” or to guard their public picture, they mentioned.
The AT Protocol, which powers Bluesky and different smaller social apps, doesn’t but assist personal knowledge, nevertheless, so there isn’t a option to conceal customers’ likes. As a substitute, the corporate constructed a option to save a user’s bookmarks off-protocol in the meanwhile, which permits them to be personal, just like Bluesky’s DMs (personal messages). If and when the protocol evolves to assist personal knowledge, things could change.
Within the meantime, the addition of saved posts on Bluesky might encourage customers to have interaction extra with content material on the platform, whereas additionally providing a option to look again at a curated assortment of solely posts you need to reference later, slightly than every part you casually preferred as you scrolled your feeds. It is going to additionally supply a substitute for replying to posts with that purple pushpin emoji, as many Bluesky customers do now as a workaround for saving posts they need to return to. (There’s even a nice little migration tool for individuals who used this technique.)
The addition follows one other current replace for the Bluesky app, which rolled out only days ago, providing a button that now affords each picture and video uploads, instruments to offer suggestions to customized feed creators, and a approach so as to add individuals to a Starter Park (a pack of really helpful individuals to comply with, which anybody can create).