The rising social media platform Bluesky has announced a feature called Trending Topics. It helps people find popular posts and topics, which could make Bluesky a better resource for breaking news.
The feature was announced on Christmas Day and is available in beta on desktop and mobile apps to all Bluesky users worldwide. To access it, hit the search icon at the bottom of the app or in the sidebar on the web interface. Doing so will reveal a list of Trending and Recommended topics below the search bar. Choosing any topic produces more similar posts. You may need to update the Android or iPhone app for the feature to show up.
“This is v1 and we will be iterating with your feedback,” reads the announcement. If the feature doesn’t work well for you, you can prevent viral content from appearing in search by unticking “Enable trending topics” in Bluesky Settings > Content and Media. The company said trending topics will be restricted to English during the testing phase. Support for other languages will be added after Bluesky rolls out Trending Topics to all its users.
The good thing about Trending Topics is that the feature honors all the offensive words and unwanted phrases you’ve muted in Bluesky’s settings. In other words, those filters will also apply to trending posts, blocking muted words from appearing in Trending Topics in place.
Bluesky is playing catchup here, as its rivals have had a similar feature for some time now. Twitter/X, for example, has had trending topics since 2017, and Meta-owned Threads rolled out trending topics in March 2024. Also, some third-party Bluesky clients, such as Greysky, already have their own version of trending topics.
Bluesky has been around for a while, chugging along. Despite lacking a handful of features which proved popular on other social media apps—such as post editing, bookmarking, and verification badges—the social media platform experienced a major uptick in popularity among ex-Twitter users following the US elections.
Bluesky’s numbers pale in comparison to Threads and X, but its users love the platform because it’s still a civil place for exchanging ideas freely without harassment or bots.
Source: Bluesky