Mr Bluesky

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, a CMO, trusted advisor, strategy consultant and Chief Bottle Washer at Rockstar CMO. In this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of what’s caught my eye, topics from our podcast, and our street knowledge blog.

Hello there!

I’m sorry, it had to be done. I tried to resist, I really, really did, but there is only one tune (and therefore subject line) this week, and it has to be Mr Blue Sky from Electric Light Orchestra.

It’s from when I was a child, and it’s a bit of an earworm,it's not really my cup of tea, but my god, this new platform is the talk of the digital town.

And no, this post is not simply here to promote that both me, as me, and as Rockstar CMO are on the platform (OK, maybe a little bit), but how could you write anything this week without reference to this?

As I type this, Bluesky, according to this real-time counter, is growing at over ten users per second and is closing in on 20 million users. This is a fraction of Twitter today, let alone at its pomp, but at this rate, by my rough maths, in 230 days (or by next year’s US Independence Day), they could reach 200 million, putting them on a par, depending on who’s stats you go by in terms of active users with Twitter.

I applied for the Bluesky waitlist back sometime in mid-2023, as I looked for a refuge from the Twitter dumpster fire (I last posted on Twitter 18 months ago or so, after a 15-year relationship). But I’ll be honest, I got distracted by post.news (now gone), Mastadon, and Threads.

And during this time bouncing between platforms, how often did I read, “Oh my god, this was like Twitter in 2008?” - and none of them had stuck with me like Twitter did when it was fun.

I feel a bit like a popular pub in town has closed, and I’ve gone from pub to pub to find where my people are at.

I’ve always found it curious when people blame the platform entirely for their experience, as the core is the people you follow. Whatever crap was going on over on Twitter, I could seek peace in my lists and stay out of the feed and avoid the extremes.

That’s not to say the platform does not impact the experience (of course it does); there is a level of trust that Musk has violated (to put it lightly), and Facebook seems to be the Forbes of social media as (for me) it’s almost unusable as my friend’s content is buried in an avalanche of ads and suggested posts.

I can’t decide where Threads fits. It used to be simple: Facebook was for people I’d drink with, LinkedIn was for business people I’d met, and Twitter was for broader business social media and news.

Now that people are posting cat videos on LinkedIn, there is a debate about whether we should bring our whole selves to the platform. LinkedIn also seems increasingly pay to play, both in terms of gaining traction with an audience and in the amount of promoted/suggested content that is in the flow. Plus, I’ve not really figured out how to curate the feed like I did with Twitter lists.

And it seems Threads can’t decide if it’s business social or insta-words.

So Bluesky? Is that going to be our new watering hole full of fun regulars?

I admit that this newsletter shares my personal experience. Yours might be different, but it’s an important question for us as marketers as we put ourselves in our audience's shoes to figure out where they are.

Assuming they look up from ChatGPT, of course. 🙂

So…. hello Mr Bluesky?

What do you think?

Thanks for reading this far, have a great week!

Cheers!

Ian

Ian Truscott | Chief Bottle Washer Rockstar CMO

Say hello, reply to this email or find me on LinkedIn or my personal website.

This week’s podcast…

Find us on Bluesky

I’m still finding the crowd on Bluesky - here is where we are and a couple of our friends…

The week’s street knowledge….

Get your Monday Marketing Mojo Working

Sorry…. :-)