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RSNStats has been on Bluesky for about a year now. The live stream of stats during Red Sox games appeared there, as on X/Twitter and Mastodon, all throughout the 2024 season.

Recently, Bluesky has heated up, with tons of new folks joining. I’ve been thrilled to be a part of that and to participate in some great conversations happening there among Red Sox fans and fans of other teams and with other interests.

We’re all learning about Bluesky on the fly and it has been fun. To help newcomers, I’ll be posting some tips on this page for getting the most from Bluesky as well as a categorized list of accounts I enjoy.

Check back with this page regularly for updates as we all learn together how best to use Blue Sky.

Accessing Bluesky

Bluesky is free and easy to use. In many ways it’s a lot like X/Twitter.

You can access Bluesky through their official app, through third-party apps, or through the web. For the official app, just search your device’s app store for Bluesky (look specifically for the one by the company Bluesky PBLLC to make sure you’re getting the official company app).

Personally, I like the web interface, which you can access anywhere at bsky.app. A better web experience, in my opinion, is with deck.blue, the work of an independent software developer. I make a small monthly donation to support deck.blue (and encourage you to do the same if you like it), but you can also use it for free.

Who To Follow

You’ll likely see some Starter Packs on Bluesky. They’re groups compiled by other Bluesky members of people you can follow for a certain topic. You’ll see Starter Packs for Red Sox accounts, but also for posts on just about any topic. There’s a nice index of Starter Packs online.

There are many Starter Packs already out there for Red Sox fans, so I’m not going to add to that. Instead, I’ll keep a list going here of the accounts I most value for Red Sox news and notes.

More baseball coverage

The next few accounts cover baseball more generally, from either a national perspective or from a more unique vantage point, such as exploring the great history of our game.

Tip: Simplifying Your Timeline

By default, the Bluesky app displays not only posts but also replies and reposts from the people you follow. Not everyone wants to see all that. Personally, I don’t care to see someone else’s replies to other people. Fortunately, it’s easy to weed those from your timeline. Here’s how using the official Bluesky app:

  1. Press the “hamburger” menu button at the top left of the app (it’s the button with three vertical lines).
  2. Choose Settings
  3. Scroll down and select Following Feed Preferences
  4. Turn off Show Replies. You can also turn off Show Reposts and Show Quote Posts, if you like.

Tip: Protect Your Account From Hackers

Naturally, you should use a long password for your account. But you can further reduce the chance someone will hack into your Bluesky account by turning on Two-Factor Authentication. It sounds complicated, but it’s really not. In the Bluesky app:

  1. Press the “hamburger” menu button at the top left of the app
  2. Choose Settings
  3. Scroll down and select turn on Require email code to log into your account.

From then on, any time you try to log into Bluesky, you’ll get a short code sent to your email account. You’ll need that code to complete the log in process. Don’t worry, you won’t have to do this every time you use Bluesky, only when you’re logging in, which should be too frequently. You’ll also know if someone else is trying to break in, because you’ll get the code in your email, but the hacker won’t and therefore won’t be able to access your account.

Convert Starter Packs To Lists

Like X, Bluesky gives you the ability to create lists. Lists are an underappreciated tool, in my opinion, for getting the most out of social media. Rather than follow hundreds of accounts and get a timeline that mixes your interests, you can create lists with a specific theme. For example, sometimes I’m not interested in seeing everything, I just want to know what the weather folks are saying about tomorrow’s forecast. When that’s the case, I can just turn to my list of local meteorologists. 

The problem is, as good as all those Bluesky Starter Packs are, they can’t be easily converted into lists. Your only option is to follow the accounts in the pack. And that’s where Spackrat comes in, a very useful, free tool with a funny name. Spackrat is the work of Bob Rudis, a gifted software developer with a long history of useful contributions to the tech field. With Spackrat, you can convert Starter Packs to lists and, even better, you can run it again to quickly update your lists should the author add more accounts to their Starter Pack.

Spackrat is available for Mac, Linux, and Windows. It is a little fiddly to get installed if you’re not familiar with command-line tools. If you run into problems, see below.

Questions? I’m happy to help

I’m excited about Bluesky’s future. We can make it great, together. If you need help, feel free to reach out to me with a direct message on the Bluesky app. Click the chat icon on the app tool bar, press the blue plus button to start a new message and search for RSNStats.

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