I have no dog in this fight as I use neither. Nevertheless, I know many value social media. I’m merely curious if the hive mind:
Blue Sky all the way. Feels like the early Twitter days.
Threads was hot right after Twitter was purchased, but then the excitement seemed to go down.
Right after the election, Bluesky zoomed up and has been the hot new social for now.
Behind the quick takes, a few significant media companies that stuck with Twitter/X, finally gave up and moved to Bluesky.
Outside of techies/geeks, the place where major media companies post their daily news and news bulletins seems to drive where a lot of the “general public” seems to hang out on socials?
My personal take is that for better or worse, the one-time dominance of a single platform (Twitter) for quick takes / tweet style social media is fractured now and no single new service will take over.
The only question is whether the attempts at full interoperability (aka “federation”) between social services will link everything together like email, or if they will remain separate islands with only limited bridges between them?
Threads feels like an Instagram extension, for the good and the bad. All the interactions I see are unknown people trying to get clicks, so there’s not really a conversation going on but at least they do not act like bots, just regular people trying to become influencers or something like that.
BlueSky feels like the Twitter of old, so it’s my site of choice these days. In my opinion a lot of people has moved from X because they dislike the direction Elon is leading, so there is definitely a political leaning in the overall zeitgeist.
Finally, X is still king in terms of news, media and personalities, the “A list” conversation is there across a myriad of less interesting things. If something happens (sadly these days, this means a war or some other disaster), the latest is on X. I think keeping it this way is crucial to X’s survival.
As @SpivR states, if there is a future it will be federated. BlueSky includes this in their capabilities or roadmap, and Threads does that as well to a certain extent. But then again, RSS and Atom didn’t save the blogs. BlueSky needs a monetization scheme fast, and I would guess Threads does not need it as long as Meta can use the data for advertising in their other platforms (like Whatsapp).
I have specifically left out the poster child of the fediverse, Mastodon,because it’s the Linux of social media: overwhelmingly technical for a “host it yourself” approach, and with a disgregated population of servers (like distros in its day). I feel it’s not ready to take over yet.
I’d agree that the “public square” idea — one space in which we all participate to discuss, seek out and share information on topical and local issues — has been damaged beyond repair. It was always a bit of a delusion IMHO, but Musk’s personal take-over of twitter broke a lot of the rose-tinted views of social media and also clarified, for a lot of people, some of the inherent issues around public discourse and how easily it can be abused and manipulated and how quickly some of the nastiest human behaviours and opinions can dominate.
It’s interesting to watch big media in this transition. They have an obvious interest in being able to get “live news” from “real people” and twitter had begun to replace the much harder work of real journalism: so many reports were of nothing more than twitter discussions and so many breaking stories sourced mainly from twitter reports. That’s no longer a credible approach for anyone who has not given up on any form of objective reporting. At the same time, big media always worked by appropriating what people knew or experienced and repackaging it to them, as exclusively as possible for profit. Twitter was a dominant means of teasing their own, often paywalled, stories and other output.
There are a lot of media and journalism folks trying to see and use BlueSky as a straightforward Twitter replacement, but unless the inherent conflicts of interest and the deep issues of abuse and manipulation (and defining what is acceptable or not from participants) is quickly and completely sorted out, and there is a sustainable business model to pay for it, any social media platform will end up failing.
Personally, I quite liked twitter but closed my account the moment Musk sealed his deal. it was blatantly obvious where things were headed. I tried Mastodon for a while, but then realised I don’t actually need that kind of social media, at all.
I want my social media to present posts in chronological order without Ads, while remembering where I last read to, without having to change views every time I open the app.
I don’t use Instagram and won’t use Threads. I have no intention of giving Meta any more of my data than I have to.
Bluesky could be good, but until it gets a decent client (i.e. Tweetbot/Ivory) It’s not usable for me.
I’m enjoying Mastodon, but I suspect that if Bluesky takes off seriously, it’s likely Mastodon will suffer.
have you tried GraySky?
For £50 a year, it’s going to have to be an order of magnitude better than Bluesky’s own app which, while not tear, is at least serviceable
I use Threads for language learning; several online tutors run daily short lessons. Bluesky well I have an account but not made much use of it — though that’s more than I ever did with Musk’s Twitter. Posted more to Bluesky in the few weeks I been on it than the years I had a Twitter account.
As Twitter had increasingly played with the feed and added “features” and ads back in the day, a third party app was a necessity for me. Bluesky’s app seems good enough so far for me. That said, I am a very light user.
Threads is just garbage. I have never met anyone who likes it or goes there.
I agree. Twitter was my one serious attempt at social media. I had two accounts, one under my full name, and a second just for breaking news, etc. I still check my name account once or twice a month.
I also have a mastodon account 
and check about as often as X.
Now that my real life social network does not post quite as much I have little interest in “influencer” culture, and social media for news is a part of the problem. I have little interest in a new Twitter. The best case scenario is federation so we can RSS “mini bloggers”
Speaking of Social Media …
Very true. Also, from the limited time I spend on Mastodon (or any social platform), it seems the userbase is also clearly the techie/power user/linux style crowd.
Even those that would never host their own server or know a command line from a store queue, Mastodon seems mostly a collection of techie ex-Twitter people that left for a less controversial and non-ad, non-monetary based system.
the most accounts I follow on Mastodon are Relay accounts. 
I have, thank goodness, avoided becoming invested in Threads. I dislike Facebook, but I have enough friends and family there that I still feel like I can’t break away from it. I’m avoiding that trap with Threads.
One of my brothers never got into Facebook. He never even started an account. I think he made the right choice.
BlueSky is susceptible to the same forces that corrupted Twitter — it’s owned and controlled by one company, which can be acquired or influenced by big investors. But it’s a good place for now.
I have an honest question that maybe you can help me with.
You are far from the only one who wants a service with no ads. How do you suppose a service is supposed to fund itself with no ad income? Do you want it to be pay-to-play? Something else?
Voices on 𝕏 just toppled the proposed Continuing Resolution. AOC and Trump are making trolling jokes about each other, to each other, in real time. I don’t think Threads or Bluesky or mastodon or anything else will be “as popular” as 𝕏 in the near term. “The conversation” whatever anyone may think of it is on 𝕏 right now.
I no longer wish to be part of that conversation. It’s not even an Elon thing — following national politics at that level of detail does not seem like a productive use of time. That time can be better spent being active in a person’s local community.
I can certainly understand this. While I’ve see other conversations on 𝕏 (lots of programming and systems discussions, and lots of sciency discussions, for example), it is clear that the political conversation is dominant by a wide margin.