Bluesky is a decentralized microblogging social media platform. You might have heard about it recently, as its sign-ups are tallying more than one million new users per day, and experts have begun to size it up next to competitors like Elon Musk’s X and Meta’s Threads. If you’re one of the many new users joining this month, you should know about Bluesky’s starter packs.
Like with any social media, building your profile and feeds from scratch can be a daunting, exhausting and tedious task. Individually searching for your friends, favorite creators and news organizations is time-consuming and, frankly, boring. That’s where Bluesky’s starter packs come in. These groups are unique to Bluesky, and you can use them to easily find cool people to follow and build your feed around your interests.
Save yourself the time and headache of manually building your Bluesky following list and consider using starter packs. Here’s everything you need to know about creating, finding and using Bluesky starter packs.
Read More: Ready to Join Bluesky? Here’s How to Get Started
What are Bluesky starter packs?
Bluesky starter packs are lists of users, created by users. They’re usually centered around a specific topic, interest or geographical area. They are similar to X’s lists, where you can create your own groups of users and share those groups with other people.
Starter packs are great for new users looking to find good people to follow. You can peruse the accounts included in the pack and follow some accounts that look interesting, or tap the “follow all” button at the top to quickly follow everyone on the list — much more efficient than manually searching and following individual accounts.
Starter packs can help you find Bluesky accounts centered around specific topics and interests.
When I was getting my Bluesky account up and running this week, I was excited to see a starter pack of North Carolina news organizations and journalists. I was able to follow them all with one tap, and it gave me a great way to catch up quickly on NC news and political developments in my “following” feed.
Using starter packs is also a great way to teach Bluesky what kind of content you’re interested in. When I signed up for Bluesky, I told it I was interested in news, and by using that NC journalist starter pack, I started seeing NC-specific news posts in my Discover feed, too. Using starter packs expedites that learning process.
How do I create a Bluesky starter pack?
If you want to curate your own list, you can easily create your own starter pack. Here’s how.
On your desktop or mobile app:
- Navigate to your profile.
- Tap Starter Packs, to the left of your posts, replies, media and likes.
- Tap Create.
- Give your pack a name and a quick description. Tap Next.
- Add accounts to the list by searching for them or selecting from your following list. Tap Next.
- Add any feeds to your pack. Tap Skip if you don’t want to select a particular feed.
I created this starter pack to connect with my CNET colleagues.
Once you’re finished with the process, Bluesky will create your starter pack. You can view it under the same tab on your profile page. You can edit them by tapping the three dots in the upper-right corner, and create a link to it by tapping “share.” I highly recommend creating a post (aka, a “skeet” as they’re called on Bluesky) with the pack’s link so more people can use your starter packs.
Why am I getting an error message when creating a Bluesky starter pack?
Don’t panic if you don’t see your Bluesky starter pack right away or get an error message. Several tests by CNET colleagues got a similar error message saying their pack couldn’t be found. In my experience, the list showed up on my profile page 5 to 10 minutes later.
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Don’t panic if you run into this error while creating a starter pack.
CNET reached out to Bluesky for advice on how to handle this error but did not immediately receive a response.
How do I find good Bluesky starter packs?
As of when this is published, there are more than 86,000 starter packs, and more are created every hour. You can browse the directory and search by keywords to find specific groups.
Once you’ve got a solid following list, I recommend looking at your favorite accounts to see who they’re following, resharing and talking about. That can also help you make sure you’ve got a well-rounded feed.
For more, check out how to delete X (formerly Twitter) and what to know about Threads and the fediverse.
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