Why every media company should have their own Bluesky server

Eyevinn Technology
4 min readNov 15, 2024

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A media or news company should have their own Bluesky server to stay independent and in full control of the access to the conversations taking place in this new and growing social media platform.

Bluesky’s social media platform has grown from 9+ million users to 14.6+ million users in two months and indications are that roughly 100,000 users are joining daily. What makes this social media platform different from X (formerly Twitter) and Threads is that not one single company controls all servers in this network. You can compare this with the World Wide Web where there is not one single company that owns all websites and everyone can make their web server and web site available to everyone connected to Internet.

Open protocols and open source infrastructure

The large social media platforms today are owned by one private company that holds all accounts, data and algorithms that determines your feed of information. As a user you are fully locked in and cannot take your network of followers or posts and move to a new home.

Built on open protocols and open source infrastructure enables a decentralized platform where not one single private company owns all servers

The key difference with this platform is that it is built around open protocols and open source infrastructure, and this makes it possible for any organization to connect their servers with their accounts and data (Personal Data Server) to the platform. You can migrate your account from one server to another server without the first server being involved. You can also add to the network your own service with your own content curation algorithms (App View).

Base image of prism: Wikimedia Commons (source)

The quickest way to get started today is to download the Bluesky app from any of the app stores and create an account on a server hosted and provided by Bluesky (bsky.social). While this is convenient, this is not the only way to get access to this social media platform, and I think now is a good opportunity to consider other options. Especially for anyone working at a media or news company.

Be in full control of the access to the conversations

With this platform growing and you are working at a media or news company it may be of importance to be present on this platform. What you now can do differently is to not be dependent on another private company for the access to this conversations. I encourage your media or news company to setup their own Personal Data Server where their employees register an account, and connects this server to this network. With your own Personal Data Server your media or news company are in full control of the access to these conversations taking place.

There are Personal Data Servers available as open source which means that no one can take away your software and you are not committed to large software license fees. This open source Personal Data Server software is now also available as a service in Eyevinn Open Source Cloud to reduce the barrier to get started and try this out.

Eyevinn Open Source Cloud was developed to reduce the barrier to getting started with open source and at the same time contribute to a sustainable model for open source by giving back a share of the revenue to the creator.

Follow the instructions in the Eyevinn Open Source Cloud documentation to setup your own Personal Data Server with just a few clicks of a button. As the code is open source you can leave and move the server to your own infrastructure whenever you like but this is a simple way to get started.

Conclusion

A media or news company should have their own Personal Data Server to stay independent and in full control of the access to the conversations taking place in this new social media platform.

You can find me on Bluesky with the handle (on our own PDS running in OSC):
@birme.social.eyevinn.technology

/Jonas Birmé
VP R&D Eyevinn Technology &
CTO Eyevinn Open Source Cloud

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Eyevinn Technology
Eyevinn Technology

Written by Eyevinn Technology

We are consultants sharing the passion for the technology for a media consumer of the future.

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