- There’s a massive exodus of Twitter users to Bluesky
- A new extension lets you transfer over Twitter follows to Bluesky
- Sky Follower Bridge makes the Bluesky experience far better
It’s no secret that there’s been a massive exodus of X (formerly Twitter) users for a variety of reasons. Some are political, the main being users seeing the social media site shifting more right-wing in terms of content and rule creation and enforcement, which had slowly been taking effect but has now accelerated since X owner Elon Musk’s appointment to a new position in Donald Trump’s incoming government.
Other reasons are more function-oriented, like declining site stability, changes to features like Block that make the site unsafe to use, the sharp increase of spam bots, the paid blue checkmark epidemic, and more. There are also recent changes to the Terms of Service that subject every user to Twitter’s Grok AI bot scrapping their posts – including art and writing.
This perfect storm of massive deficits has resulted in a staggering exodus to Bluesky, a site founded by one of the former Twitter creators, Jack Dorsey. According to the official Bluesky account, there are currently 19 million users, and that number seems to grow each day.
However, a major program remains for those seeking to and have already relocated to the shiny new site: how do you recover all those followers you’ve built up for months and years?
What is Sky Follower Bridge?
Sky Follower Bridge is a handy extension that lets you find and follow people from Twitter. It’s available for both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, and you simply add the extension, log in to your Bluesky account through it, and then run it. At the same time, a tab is opened to either your following or follower count. It searches for matches through the handle, username, and any names in the bio.
According to the extension page, it can’t search for all Twitter followers at once “due to Twitter’s limitations.” Instead, you can use the Find More button at the bottom of the current results. This can be a bit time-consuming and not perfectly accurate, but it’s far easier than trying to find each person individually.
How Sky Follower Bridge changed me
When it came to Bluesky, I was as early adopter as possible with the invite system that had been in place at the time (now you can simply register like normal). I loved the interface being so similar to Twitter and the lack of drama and discourse thanks to its newness, but I found myself back on Twitter not long after due to the lack of activity on Bluesky.
This latest and largest exodus finally motivated me to return to the newer site, yet I faced the arduous task of transferring over my following count. When I tell you it took hours to find and follow maybe 30-50 people, this process alone made me nearly quit in frustration. But doom scrolling on Twitter actually saved me for once, as I found the Sky Follower Bridge extension through it.
Once I installed it, it took me less than an hour to find and follow every user on my following tab, with only one false positive that I immediately corrected. Soon, nearly everyone I followed returned the favor. Once I returned to my feed, that was where the magic happened. And by magic, I mean having a feed reminiscent of old-school Twitter filled with posts from my followers without all the alt-right posts, blue checkmark accounts, and endless spam.
Final thoughts
It’s rare that an extension extends beyond the practical and is capable of giving me such immense joy. But thanks to Sky Follower Bridge, I’ve finally transformed my Bluesky feed into something magical and addictive. It’s to the point where I’ve rarely checked my Twitter, and when I do, the atrocious state of it makes me physically recoil.
Bluesky certainly isn’t perfect, as it’s a new site that’s still ironing out the kinks — and quite a bit of kinks are still present. But now that I have a sizable chunk of the people I follow on Twitter on Bluesky, it feels far more like home than even a month ago. Thanks, Sky Follower Bridge.
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allisa.james@futurenet.com (Allisa James)
