022 — Just Getting Starter’d

Hey. How's it going? I'm Ryan Hefner, and this is the All Play podcast. So it's been a couple weeks since my last update, and it's not that I haven't been up doing stuff. I guess I just really it's been hard to find the time to record during the day.

I work down here in the basement and, we moved our laundry room down here. And so a lot of times, there's a washing machine or dryer machine or washer or dryer running through the day, and and that can't get picked up on the mic. Probably not really my real excuse. I think, between client work and also kind of, I guess, kind of getting, like also trying to just, like, make work on personal project stuff. I guess I've just been getting a little bit distracted and haven't made time, for this podcast, but gonna try to change that.

I might actually do a couple here right now. It's, 4:19 in the AM, and I woke up at around 2:40 or 3 o'clock, and I just couldn't go back to bed. Tried to lay there for about an hour, couldn't get do it. So we're here. And, I guess maybe a part of that is just because I'm kind of excited about this new project that I've been working on for, I guess I mean, I guess it's probably been 2 or 3 weeks.

I ended up getting more into Bluesky . There seems to be you know, there was a big wave of people moving from Twitter to Bluesky , or maybe not moving from Twitter to Bluesky , but just getting more involved in Bluesky post elections. And, I don't know. There's just something about the energy over there. It feels fresh.

It kinda feels like the original Twitter back in the day when the algorithm wasn't so involved in, trying to serve stuff up. Obviously, they don't really have ads and other things like that that are kind of getting in the way and and, and distracting you or, you know, getting in the way of the the people that you're following and what they're posting. I mean, I'm mostly just a I don't really live in the discover stuff or any of these other feeds, but it is kinda cool that you can actually configure and add your own feeds. So, like, they I think they have a a quiet posters one where it's, like, people who just kind of, like, don't post that often, but when they do, that way you can just kinda see that feed. So I don't I mean, actually, that's just the real exciting thing about it to me is this whole, the possibilities of the platform and the fact that the API is solid and open and free, they have a fire hose, and, there's just a lot of capabilities.

And, actually, one of the things that I think is most exciting about it, at least from a beginner because this is, I think, how I was able to kinda get up and running quickly on, Blue Sky was the, the concept that they have of these starter packs, which is really just lists. But, you know, they kinda they they bundle them in a way to where you can either follow all or or just see, you know, people who are on these lists. I haven't used the follow all too often, but I actually have been starting to do that a little bit more because I figure, why not? Just follow follow everyone who's in this kind of curated list that's amongst people who you're interested in. If, you know, over time, if either I mean, the reality is fewer people post than, than you than you really think.

There's there's, you know, the 1% are the 1, you know, and I'm not talking about, like, financial 1%, but the the the the majority activity is from, like, you know, 1% of the people on the platform. So I mean, over following isn't too bad as long as it doesn't get too noisy or distract you. But looking into starter packs, I was like, man, there's there's a lot of value here, and I wanted to know more. Like, I wanted to, I mean, 1, I I was actually getting added to a few starter packs. And at the same time, I it would have been nice to know that I was added to a starter pack.

Right now, Bluesky doesn't really offer that. I guess, also, maybe I would like to know if I ever get removed from a starter pack. Like, maybe the person who's curating this thing doesn't feel like I I fall within this category of, of what they're trying to do. So, I think that is an interesting discovery or, like, an interesting opportunity, regarding, like, around starter packs and making it a little bit more, available to people to to know what what starter packs they're in and and whether they've been removed from them or not. I also think there's an interesting possibility of understanding in what context is someone following me.

Are they following me direct directly from my profile? Are they following me from within the context of another starter pack? Again, at first, I thought this was available via the Bluesky API, but, and actually was probably one of the reason, which I'll I'll get to in a second, was one of the reasons that sparked me even, exploring, building a a little tool or app or utility on top of of Bluesky . But, to know, like, basically, like, where how are people finding me? And, like, where is it?

Where are the majority of these follows coming from? It it's probably not organic. It's definitely gotta be a starter pack. But which starter pack? I think that also then begs the question like, well, if there's people who are following me from this starter pack, are there maybe, like, other starter packs that are similar to this one that I should, reach out?

And then that's a whole other and, again, so, you know, it's advantageous to be on starter packs because especially people are following you. And if you get on a really popular one, you're gonna have more followers. But granted, follow just because you have followers doesn't really matter. I mean, it's a good thing. It's a great thing.

But at the same time, there I guess the the potential alternate is that if someone follows you from a, from a starter pack, they they might be, like, less engaged as versus someone who follows you directly from your profile because chances are the person who follows you from your profile saw something that you wrote or is interested in something that you're doing and wants to kind of follow that journey. The starter packs is a little bit more of a shotgun approach of just, like, following a bunch of people. But I still think it's cool because I think I still think the, the serendipity levels are just high there. So that whole me miss, misreading the API docs a little bit sent me down this path of, man, I wanna build some more tools around starter packs. I I think the concept is cool.

The the current flow within the app of, like, creating a starter pack is okay ish. Editing a starter pack is a little bit more clunky because they basically take you through, like, the every step that you, did when you were creating the starter pack. And so I think there's some opportunities there to streamline that. And, yeah. So I I dropped all my other projects that I that I've been working on.

You know, I've been thrashing around around trying to do stuff. But, I rolled up my sleeves and, of course, registered a few domain names. I got starter packs starter packs dot net, and I started to dig into the API. And, just started kinda roughing out what, like, a a starter pack page would look like, what, like, a profile page would look like, started to create the Explore stuff, knew that I wanted to have, you know, the ability for someone to follow directly from from starter packs dot net as well as potentially perform other activities that would require auth. So I started to dig into the OAuth flow, which was a little hairier than some of the other OAuth flows that I've used in the past and also partially due to the dev experience, you know, working within, like, local host versus actually having this spun up and out on a public server somewhere with, SSL and everything else.

But I was able to get, both local and I think public OAuth working. That's actually the the next thing I'm moving to next. But, the other really exciting thing was I was able to spin up a quick fire hose consumer. And so what that's allowed me to do is there's actually no I I guess I should backtrack a little bit. Right now, also on Blue Sky, the only way to discover starter packs is when either people share them on the timeline or you go to someone's profile and you go over to their tab starter packs and you see if they happen to have any.

The, the unlock that starter packs dot net is having is I'm actually aggregating or at least trying to aggregate all of the starter packs and making those to where you can kind of, like, freely browse and search those without having to dig through profiles or rely on, links and feeds. So yeah. I mean, that's kind of the the the long and short of it. I do have the fire hose working. It's already processed over let me see what the the current running total is.

72,328 starter packs that you can search on. It's the the fire hose is definitely I mean, I guess I never really worked, you know, Twitter had the fire hose back in the day. I think now you have to pay, like, 1,000 of dollars a month in order to have access to it. It definitely is like a at least from, like, a developer standpoint, I feel like it's it's quite the dopamine drug of, like, just understanding you have access to all this raw data that's coming in, and and the possibilities and the capabilities of it. It's super cool.

The, and also just the fact that the platform is growing so fast with so many users, being like, basically, it's growing a 1000000 users a day. I think they're at 20,000,000 now. I don't know. It's just really exciting. So that's an basically, I'm I'm introducing this new project that I'm working on called, starter packs, a very non original name.

Hopefully, maybe that. I'm not sure if that's gonna help me or hurt me when it comes to the SEO front. Hoping that it'll help me. Right now, again, like, basically, everything that I have up is just the browsing experience. I'm gonna be adding off and the ability to basically do more actions within starter packs dot net to, both, like, follow individuals as well as well as follow packs and potentially also create and manage the people that are, in those packs by quickly being able to add people to 1 or multiple packs that you might have and kinda spin those up and, as you're kinda browsing around and and exploring.

I think the other cool thing too is it's really just a this is kind of like, it's not go geared on anything about the feed. It's more of just like a community explorer. So from a pack, obviously, you can see people, you can then dive into their profile, you can see who they follow, who's following them, you can start to dig into there. You can also see all the starter packs. The, again, like the net new feature that I plan on adding on top of this is this whole what packs am I in.

So this is not a feature that's currently offered via, starter packs or via Bluesky . Sorry. And that is where I think I might be able to do, like, a slight. This is always I'm I'm really kind of, like, struggling on this one. I'm just I have a feeling it's valuable.

I have a feeling people would potentially pay for it. I'm not sure how much. And at the same time, I don't know. I I am a little torn by it. The, I think the one good thing though is I feel like if if I'm able to make a little money on this one, I can also give back to the open source projects that I'm using to to pull us all all the stuff together, and also cover my server cost and my time.

But, yeah. I think there is potentially, like, a little bit of a money play by both, getting basically, by subscribing, you would get alerts when you've either been added or removed to a starter pack. It would also basically just show you the starter packs that you've been included in. So it's kind of almost like a little mystery thing. I think I might be play around with, like, a a weird way to show, like, the fact that you're in, you know, x number of of packs.

Would you like to open up those packs kind of, you know, I guess maybe like baseball card or Pokemon or some sort of mystery box style and see what see what you're in and then continue to get updates, on those. I think the stats around who's following you there is interesting. I I have a few ideas on how I might be able to kind of make a a rough guess or estimate, but I'm gonna have to definitely it's gonna be some triangulation of who what are the follows that are coming in via the fire hose and and who else, is being followed within that context to then give a rough estimate of, like, potentially which pack you're being followed from. Because, again, Bluesky isn't really surfacing exactly the fact that you are followed from a from a starter pack versus not. Who knows?

I mean, also, their I'm sure their API is gonna be changing, so maybe that information will start coming or be available at some point. But, again, I think it's just another value add that I can provide. And, yeah, I don't know. I'm just really excited about it. I guess I'm gonna leave it there.

So, yeah, starter packs dot net. Check it out. You can follow it. I'm gonna be start posting some just, like, general updates, about what's going on, on Bluesky @starterpacks.net, which is the handle, because I don't wanna be a broken record on my own personal one where I could just keep kinda talking about, but I probably will do that and cross post between the 2. And I don't know.

It's just what I'm working on. I also have a bunch of other stuff that I'm gonna get into, but I'm gonna save that for another one. I'm already at 16 minutes. So, yeah, I'm just getting starter packed over here. But, hopefully, you'll check it out.

I hope you find it interesting. I think it's cool. If you're a developer, I think there's there's just a lot of possibilities and capabilities on Bluesky , and I'm sure, if you're in if you're if you have the the, you know, the I don't know. I could I I imagine people are probably getting stoked on it, which is like another thing just creating excite excitement over there at Bluesky . So, yeah, so I'm gonna wrap it there.

I'm Ryan Hefner. This is the All Play podcast. Follow me on Bluesky @ryanhefner.com. And, I have also set up the podcast. I guess I'll have to start posting the episodes over there as well.

It's, @allplay.fm . And, yeah, I'm gonna leave it there. Alright. This is a long one. I'll try to make the next one a little shorter.

Alright. Have a great one. Later.