Firstly, a caveat. I’m very aware that this blog could rapidly outdate if Bluesky crashes faster than Google Glass, but for the moment you’ll need to take it at face value.

Secondly, there is a very big factor here on supply-and-demand. The premise of Buesky being great for PRs, in the same way Twitter was, is predicated on there being journalists on it.

Oh thirdly, I’m going to focus on why Twitter was great – rather than why it’s not crap, toxic, not fun, why the algorithm is screwed, and that it’s owned by Lex Luthor. Life’s too short.”

Reason one

While Google is a search engine, Twitter was a discovery engine. You didn’t know what was going to land in your feed next. I would never have Googled for a “Kerning Game”, or Pub Quiz pedantry.

Reason two

It was great at building connections. It was the world’s greatest pub, full of interesting people, intriguing conversations, and friends – but also including drunks in the corner but you could just ignore them back then.

It’ll sound borderline trite, but there were also genuine friendships that developed. There are numerous people whose paths I’d never have crossed but who I spoke with regularly, and when it all went south, these were people I missed chatting to.

However, for those entering the PR industry over the last few years, Twitter has simply been seen as ‘THAT platform’. The benefits and fun just aren’t a thing – rightly – but it’s not to say the original premise behind it is equally arcane.

Once you get over the ‘isn’t this just Twitter?’ thing then Bluesky has the potential – from initial diddling around at least – to get back to the Good Old Days of the blue tick.

So, why does this matter for PRs?

Because many journalist relationships I built up were forged on Twitter. It was a route to connecting on a 1:1 level – for making a name outside of a congested inbox by being ‘you’ and not just a subject line.

You bonded over shared interests – football (even if I got banned from tweeting about Liverpool because I jinxed it every single time); music; books; spies; a pathological hatred of mayonnaise. Tick, tick, tick, tick, almost tick as no-one agrees.

Why now?

The topic of Bluesky cropped up when pulling together some internal training on media relationships recently. I thought back to how I built them and what kept surfacing was Twitter.

Key behind it was that it wasn’t a formal ‘me’, but a genuine ‘me’ (without crossing the line). Granted, this was a line I perhaps trod more finely than ideal once or twice – although I stand by my argument with Milo Yiannopoulos when he went haywire about 100% of PRs all being 100% idiots.

Where Bluesky can come into its own and become a staple of building journalist relationships lies in work today. Journalists work as remotely as PRs – we’re not in London at the same time as it was when I was starting out. Meeting ad hoc for a pint after work just isn’t straightforward (if feasible at all).

Importantly, the vast majority of journalists don’t have phones beyond their personal mobiles – pitching is hugely email-based (arguably this has made things worse for all concerned, but that’s another blog for another day).

So, relationships need to be built by other means.

For all its recent toxicity, it can’t be dismissed that Twitter was a great platform for building rapport, friends and connections – as well as a way to discover things you never knew you wanted to know or which you’d ever search for.

Bluesky has the potential to do this again, and PRs can’t ignore the opportunity at hand. More than anything, it’s bloody good fun.

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