022 — Just Getting Starter’d

All Play w/ Ryan Hefner

Wow, it’s been over a month since my last episode. That’s not due to me being too lazy, if anything just the opposite. I have been thrashing around on projects, but I would like to introduce you to my latest project that is piggy backing on the mass migration to Bluesky.

Just after the election, it seemed like the draw for a new platform that was a little less Elon and a little more move on was needed, and a lot of people felt the same way. I know I was pulled over there after I heard more people talking about it, and also discovering that more of the people I follow on the other platform were moving over. I was also added to a Starter Pack or two, which made things a bit more interesting as people starter to follow more.

For those who are not on Bluesky yet, or just new, Starter Packs are essentially a user created list of accounts or other Starter Packs, but you have the option to Follow All, or individually. I think the fact that Bluesky feels like the Twitter of yore, coupled with the fact that you can quickly build up the people you follow, and gain followers, via Starter Packs has helped ease some of the awkwardness of migrating platforms.
When I first got added to a Starter Pack, and started to see my follower account grow, I’m not going to lie, I was hooked! It also got me more interested in Bluesky and the AT Protocol in general. I started to dig into the API to see what you could do, what was available to work with, and what was potentially missing.

The one thing I wanted to see was if there was an easy way to see which Starter Packs I was added to, and unfortunately–or fortunately depending on how you look at it–there was not. I also wanted to see if there was a way to know where someone followed me from, whether is was from a Starter Pack, or directly from my Profile, or a Post. At first, I thought that was available, which got me super excited and actually made me spin up a quick project to start exploring more. Unfortunately as I started to dig in I found out that wasn’t the case, but discovered other interesting things that retained my interest/excitement to explore more.
After some quick hacking, and a few domains registered(!), I was well on my way to abandoning the projects I was previously working on to explore this new...thing. After a few nights of hacking stuff together, and exploring the OAuth integration, I had the bones for a new project. That project is, Starter Packs.

Check it out and let me know what you think. I hope you find some interesting Starter Packs and people, and will follow along for the journey. You can follow the project on Blueskey, @starterpacks.net. I have a bunch more plans for it, but next up is getting OAuth/account management integrated into the site to unlock some basic follow and Starter Pack management actions.

To follow along, you can find me at ryanhefner.com, follow me on Bluesky @ryanhefner.com and keep up with the show on allplay.fm and @allplay.fm.

Help yourself, while supporting the show, by trying some of the services that I use, and highly recommend:
Transistor FM
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