I’m curious about Bluesky, and have accidentally found I can access part of its API. In particular, given a user’s handle, I can download their skytes, their posts. I got tipped off here: https://mastodon.social/@badlogic@mastodon.gamedev.place/111246801418649849
Earlier this week, I decided to use this to see who’s who in Bluesky. Starting with 10 “seed” accounts, I downloaded their 100 most recent skytes (blurts?) and scanned them for references to other Blueskytes. From this enhanced list of users, I continued the process until I had 10,000 usernames (slow, overnight). Not good network sampling, either, but simple and brute force. On the way I keep track of how many references there are to each user, so I end up with data on how often different accounts are @-ed or mentioned. Here is the top 50:
| Rank | Handle | Mentions |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | neilhimself.neilgaiman.com | 476 |
| 2 | bsky.app | 427 |
| 3 | pfrazee.com | 421 |
| 4 | darthbluesky.bsky.social | 242 |
| 5 | jay.bsky.team | 233 |
| 6 | nytimes.com | 206 |
| 7 | alttext.bsky.social | 178 |
| 8 | washingtonpost.com | 168 |
| 9 | profmusgrave.bsky.social | 158 |
| 10 | scalzi.com | 150 |
| 11 | deck.blue | 126 |
| 12 | danirabaiotti.bsky.social | 119 |
| 13 | support.bsky.team | 108 |
| 14 | jun.de | 106 |
| 15 | faineg.bsky.social | 102 |
| 16 | graysky.app | 100 |
| 17 | why.bsky.team | 97 |
| 18 | chuckwendig.bsky.social | 90 |
| 19 | jbouie.bsky.social | 89 |
| 20 | aoc.bsky.social | 87 |
| 21 | scoremywordle.bsky.social | 87 |
| 22 | furryli.st | 87 |
| 23 | jaketapper.bsky.social | 86 |
| 24 | emily.bsky.team | 80 |
| 25 | berduck.deepfates.com | 79 |
| 26 | tkingfisher.bsky.social | 76 |
| 27 | estrogenempress.gay | 76 |
| 28 | carlomasala1.bsky.social | 75 |
| 29 | gailsimone.bsky.social | 74 |
| 30 | mmasnick.bsky.social | 74 |
| 31 | fotovorschlag.bsky.social | 72 |
| 32 | kenwhite.bsky.social | 71 |
| 33 | rauchway.bsky.social | 68 |
| 34 | thoughtbubbleuk.bsky.social | 65 |
| 35 | jamesgunn.bsky.social | 64 |
| 36 | taz.de | 64 |
| 37 | premeemohamed.com | 62 |
| 38 | jack.bsky.social | 60 |
| 39 | tagesspiegel.de | 60 |
| 40 | aliafonzy.bsky.social | 59 |
| 41 | jaz.bsky.social | 58 |
| 42 | roterpander.bsky.social | 54 |
| 43 | zeit.de | 54 |
| 44 | financialtimes.com | 54 |
| 45 | attackerman.bsky.social | 54 |
| 46 | zeitonline.bsky.social | 53 |
| 47 | moinbot.bsky.social | 53 |
| 48 | briankeene.bsky.social | 52 |
| 49 | realkachelmann.bsky.social | 52 |
| 50 | janboehm.bsky.social | 51 |
I think Neil Gaiman is a nice guy, and a great writer, but why is he the biggest thing in Bluesky? He seems very engaged there, though. I recognise a lot of the other accounts as people I used to see in the former place. I have to say, it seems a bit dull!
This isn’t good sampling, but checking 10k accounts in a population of 2 million should be starting to get good coverage. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was missing out whole language-defined zones, though (some DE stuff there, but very little east Asian).
Kuba Suder @mackuba saw me tooting about it on Mastodon, and has access to a 30-day Bluesky firehose. He ran a similar query, but without the network sampling issues. His results are different:
https://mastodon.social/@mackuba@martianbase.net/111530599484964224
A lot more very highly-mentioned bots, and some users @-ed much more than in my data. However, a lot of the key figures are in similar positions. Well, if we exclude the bots, there is at least a correlation!
