The Great Twitter Exodus of 2022 is still happening. It’s just a little…fractured. A lot of X power users migrated to Bluesky early on, which paved the way for a flood of folks to join that service in 2024. Meanwhile, a lot of technically inclined individuals are still hanging out on Mastodon (at least, that’s where I hang out).
Bluesky and Mastodon are both decentralized services, in theory, but users of one service can’t really talk to users on the other—or it wasn’t possible before Bridgy Fed, anyway. It’s a beta service that makes it possible for Bluesky and Fediverse-compatible applications, such as Mastodon, to interact.
What is the Fediverse?
Let’s back up a little. Mastodon is part of the Fediverse, a collection of services that connect to the same protocol. Threads, another place where a lot of X users ended up, is starting to connect to the Fediverse; WordPress blogs can also connect. This all points to a future where people can use whatever social network they like and follow people who prefer to use a different one, with one problem: Bluesky, despite being decentralized, isn’t part of this network.
This is where Bridgy Fed comes in. With this service, individual users of either service can opt in to “bridging” their accounts. I tested this out with my friend and Lifehacker alumni Eric Ravenscraft, who hangs out on Bluesky more than me. It worked well—we can now see each other’s posts, like each other’s posts, and even talk to each other, cross-network.
Step-by-step instructions to connect the two may be found at: https://lifehacker.com/tech/use-bridgy-feed-to-link-mastodon-and-bluesky.