Nobody has ever called me an influencer. I am not even a heavy user of social media, much less one of those who has legions of followers. But the one social media site where I used to be most active and had the most followers was Twitter, now X. By now, everyone knows that things have changed a lot at Twitter/X in the last two years.
Before anyone flames me and turns this into just one more political firefight, I’m not just talking about the way Elon Musk turned X into a partisan political site. Even in the early days of Musk’s ownership, the erratic rules changes and periodic attempts to squeeze money out of users in various questionable ways were off-putting. But the real issue I had was the quality of interaction I would get.
As someone posting in a niche interest area (motorcycles) with followers in the high hundreds, not the thousands or millions, I was never the target of the scam artists who bedeviled other Twitter/X users. I was too small to be worth the effort. But I did notice a lot of accounts that looked and acted like bots. And although I had no frame of reference at the time, the level of interaction I got from my followers was pretty low. Probably because many of them were bots.
I gravitated to Twitter in the first place because what I was looking for from social media was basically a news feed. I wanted to discover good content around the web, possibly spot ideas and trends to keep the Common Tread blog at RevZilla stocked with stories (that’s my real job), as well as share with others what we were posting at Common Tread. But the payoff got less and less, and that was even before things turned more political and antagonistic. So about a year ago I started looking for alternatives.
I began posting our daily Common Tread articles on Threads and Bluesky. Neither was satisfying. As an offshoot of Instagram, Threads was home to a motorcycle community that mostly seems more focused on bitchin’ wheelie photos or tips for finding a cute “backpack” or a macho biker dude, depending on which way the poster swings. Bluesky, as an offshoot of pre-Musk Twitter, felt familiar, but there was nobody there. The motorcycle community was numbered in the tens, it seemed, not millions.
But I kept posting on Bluesky and now I’m glad I did. You’ve probably heard about the Xodus, the mass migration after the U.S. election away from the increasingly politicized X. Bluesky got most of the benefit.
I had fewer than 100 followers on Bluesky on election day. Now, that number has quadrupled. The user numbers are still small, compared to X or Threads or other social media, but what’s most important is the level and quality of interaction. Now that I do have a frame of reference, I realize just how bad it was at Twitter/X. With half as many followers on Bluesky as I had on Twitter/X, I get what I would estimate is at least five times as many responses to my posts, on average.
Among the millions of people who have signed up for Bluesky this month are a significant number of what I see as true motorcycle enthusiasts, not the would-be riders or motorcycle dabblers so common on Threads (though I want to reach them, too), as well as top writers and broadcasters such as Mat Oxley, Steve English, Simon Patterson, Suzi Perry, and more, all following the path of David Emmett, who was the earliest adopter of Bluesky.
It has become, almost overnight, a vibrant motorcycle community. That’s why I am encouraging you to check it out.
I hope we don’t end up in a situation where we have separate social media worlds that become political echo chambers, with the right on one platform and the left on another. That may be reassuring in the short term, as we all get the falsely comforting warm blanket of validation, but it’s bad for all of us in the long run. But even more than that, I hope the motorcycle community at Bluesky keeps growing because as a niche activity, we need a home. Come check it out and I hope you join us.
