Dear Reader,
Hudson River Blue is now on Bluesky Social, the social media platform started by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Bluesky's resemblance to the site formally known as Twitter is hardly accidental: It's like X but without the ads, bots, and upsells.
Because of that, Bluesky feels like a natural fit for HRB. It's familiar, it's conversational, and it's easy to post links to articles. It's free to join, with no invitation codes are required. The community is small right now – just 14 million users compared to the 585 million accounts on X – but it already includes some exceptional English-language soccer journalists from around the world. Plus, a few nifty analysis accounts such as g+ GameFlow and McLachBot are now exclusively on Bluesky — both stopped posting to X because of technical problems with the site.
We have our own issues with X. Not to bore you with the details, X's interface with our website is glitchy, and using it can be a pain.
Besides, X has given us diminishing returns ever since 2022, when Elon Musk took over the company then known as Twitter. Back in the pre-Musk/post-COVID days, we added thousands of followers every year, and the algorithm placed our posts in the feeds of a wide range of users. Since then, our total number of followers flatlined, and fewer new readers are finding us through the site.
We're not ready to pull the plug on X. We will continue to post on our feed there and engage with our readers. But we hope that you decide to join us on Bluesky, where we will be active. Take a look around, check it out. The more the merrier.
