Bluesky Embraces Long-Form Content to Rival X Articles

Elon Musk’s platform X offers long-form writing through its Articles feature, accessible exclusively to paying subscribers and businesses. Conversely, the decentralized social networking startup Bluesky has unveiled a unique approach.

On Thursday, Bluesky rolled out an updated app that integrates with Standard.site, a community-driven initiative designed for creating long-form content based on the same protocol as Bluesky.

With this update, Bluesky users can engage with a wider array of content beyond the platform’s typical short posts. They now have access to articles, blog entries, and newsletters shared across an extended network of apps powered by the AT Protocol, collectively referred to as the “Atmosphere.” This ecosystem includes platforms like Leaflet, pckt, and Offprint, which support independent authors and publishers in retaining ownership of their work while broadening their online presence.

Initially, these articles will appear as dynamic link cards, offering better previews. Bluesky suggests that this is just the starting point, with further enhancements on the way.

This marks the second enhancement inspired by community-driven projects at Bluesky. In February, a startup named Germ became the first private messaging service to launch directly from Bluesky’s app through a similar integration.

By building technological infrastructure alongside its social media platform, Bluesky can leverage other applications and services utilizing the AT Protocol. This setup also provides advantages for third parties, allowing them to benefit from distribution via Bluesky’s network of around 44.5 million registered users.

The shift toward long-form content closely follows WordPress’s recent announcement of a plugin that enables any WordPress site to publish within the Atmosphere. This plugin complements another that facilitates publishing on open social services powered by a different protocol, ActivityPub, such as Mastodon.

Similar to Bluesky, WordPress’s integration employs Standard.site’s lexion records, meaning that your blog is treated as data on the AT Protocol rather than just a link shared across platforms like Bluesky. As a result, any app compatible with the AT Protocol can enable its users to access WordPress blog entries.

This new integration into Bluesky illustrates a broader vision for an open social web—where data is readily accessible, shareable across any client, and users can easily navigate between personal data servers (PDS). Although Bluesky was the pioneer of PDS, other alternatives are emerging, including options like Eurosky, Blacksky, and Northsky.

This strategy significantly contrasts with X’s model for long-form or any content, which remains restricted to its app and permits only embedded sharing elsewhere online.

Nonetheless, X possesses a major distribution advantage with its 550 million monthly active users—an edge that Bluesky may struggle to overcome.

The updated version of Bluesky (v1.122) also introduces several other enhancements, including a revamped GIF picker, a new photo viewer, expanded account-level moderation labels, and a fix for a bug that was previously causing silent failures in some iOS video uploads.