Bluesky and Flashes for Artists
Greetings my lovely friends! Hope you’re having a wonderful DAY!! IN THIS POST i will share my experience with these new players in the social media world!
What are Bluesky and Flashes?
Bluesky is a fairly recent Twitter alternative. Originally they were even part of Twitter but they became an independent company in 2021. The development of the app accelerated after Twitter was acquired by Elon Musk and it has had a huge boost in users in recent months, with 32 million users right now.
It is a decentralised app, this means it’s open for users to create their own experience by creating their own feeds and algorithms, and for 3rd party developers to create new apps that run on Bluesky content.
Flashes is a brand new 3rd party app for Bluesky. It gives the user an image/video based experience quite similar to Instagram. All images and videos posted on Bluesky and Flashes will appear in both apps, text-only posts on Bluesky do not appear in Flashes.
Flashes is brand new, they launched officially today, 25th of Feb, and at the moment it’s only available for iOS but an Android version is planned for the future.
I’ve been able to test the beta version in recent weeks and I think it works great!
The look of the feed and of our profile page is similar to instagram, but there are no ads, reels or other noisy posts pushed into your feeds. Videos are possible though at the moment most posts are static images.
You have a ‘Following’ feed with posts of all the accounts you follow in chronological order. There’s also a ‘Bluesky Discover’ feed, this feed has an algorithm and you can train it by saying which posts you like and don’t like in the Bluesky app and it seems quite responsive to that. (I’ve been meaning to ask the developer of Flashes to add this option to train the feed to Flashes too, right now you can’t yet).
Flashes also has a Timeline and Trending feed. And you can add more feeds suited to your interests too.
The developer has been working hard at improving the app, adding new functions and taking out bugs during the Beta phase and he has plans to add some more great functions (like stories and being able to login with more than 1 account) in future updates. He’s been eager to get feedback and improve the app, so if you feel anything is missing or not working well, do reach out to him! His handle is @flashes.blue.
I think it’s a great alternative for those who want to escape Meta platforms and I think our experience on both Bluesky and Flashes will only get better as more and more of our favourite artists and art directors make the switch and we can build our communities here.
For those who are on Android and don’t want to wait until Flashes for Android is launched, you can try Pinksky app which is also an image based 3rd party app for Bluesky. It’s similar to Flashes but a bit different too.
How to Get Started
1. You can create a new account on either of the apps.
2. I highly recommend to download both apps and at least make sure that your profile looks good in both.
In Bluesky you can add a header image (not visible in Flashes).
Once you’ve posted a few images/videos you can add a portfolio tab to your profile in Flashes and there are some more settings to try for your profile there.
To change these settings go to your profile page and select ‘Advanced’ at the top. Then select ‘Flashes Profile’. Here you can change the settings of how your profile page looks to others. Click on ‘Preview’ to see it like others will see it.
3. Find people to follow! This is actually a bit harder than on certain other social media. Bluesky does not automatically import users from other social media or from your mailbox. And many of our friends simply haven’t made the switch to these new platforms yet but don’t worry, here are a few tips to find ‘your people’!
- if you’ve found someone you know, check who they follow to find more accounts with similar interests
- search for ‘starter packs’ – anyone can make a starter pack, they’re basically lists with accounts around a certain theme. This is easiest done on the Bluesky app or you can check this website. There are some great KidLit and Illustrator starter packs out there already to get you started.
- I also highly recommend to block or mute anyone who’s post you don’t care to see in your feeds (thinking mostly about the discovery feed here), even if they haven’t necessarily done anything to target you. It’s your feed, make it something you enjoy!
4. Add some extra feeds to follow – there are a few ways to add new feeds, the easiest way is search for and follow existing feeds. But you can also set up your own algorithms to create a feed that shows you exactly the kind of posts you want to see! If you want to create your own feed from scratch you can check out Bluesky Feed Creator. Another option is to create a list, to which you can add specific accounts and add that as a feed to your account.
5. Start posting! Use hashtags and add Alt text to your images (there’s a setting that helps remind you to add alt text before posting in case you always forget). Alt text is great for the visually impaired and the text also helps in search results.
Posts are currently limited to maximum 4 images, or 1 video of max 1 minute. Text is limited to 300 characters, Alt text does allow for much longer text though.
6. Repost your work and that of accounts you love! It’s highly recommended to repost occasionally so your posts get pushed back to the top of the chronological feeds again.
And sharing other people’s work shows it to your followers and gives more people the chance to discover and be discovered!
I personally was a bit hesitant to share other people’s posts because I didn’t want it to clutter up my own profile page on Bluesky but on Flashes this is not a problem at all! Your profile page only shows your own posts and the posts you repost simply appear in people’s feeds.
Is This a Good Platform for Artists?
I think many artists have been a bit hesitant to try out Bluesky until now because it was not really an image based app. Most of us prefer how Instagram looks, just not how it works lately…
However, I’m glad to say there is already a pretty active kidlit community on Bluesky and there also seem to be lots of fantasy and game illustrators (apologies if this is not the correct name for these kind of illustrators 😅, I’m sure what to call them). I’ve also found some landscape artists and great ceramic artists too. But there’s no doubt that there is still a gap. I’m missing a lot of the artists I used to follow on Instagram, mixed media and sketchbook artists, the art licensing community, …
But with the launch with Flashes I think we have a platform now that feels more like home and it definitely has lots of good potential. So I really hope to see more beautiful art and more videos of artist making wonderful art on these platforms!
I hope that many more artists will follow us here so we can build a thriving art community that isn’t being limited by horrible algorithms, bad policies and power hungry CEO’s like we are on Meta en Twitter.
Tips to Grow Your Account
So far I’ve found growing an account on Bluesky happens quite naturally and it’s easier than on Instagram or Twitter! But there are definitely things that help:
- post and repost regularly
- comment on other people’s posts
- take part in art challenges
- create a starterpack (in Bluesky app) or ask to be added to a specific starterpack if you’ve found one that you feel you belong to. And then share your starterpack in your feed!
Let's connect on Bluesky / Flashes!!
My Bluesky/Flashes handle is inebeerten.bsky.social.
And if you have any questions or thoughts you’d like to share, please leave a comment!
Thanks so much for reading!
Cheers from Hoi An, Vietnam!
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What do you think?