> Bluesky's successes is really making me feel that the first S of the abbreviation S.N.S. do stand for what it stands.
There's tons of alternate social media out there. Forums, Subreddits, Tildes, Discourse, Matrix, IRC, Mastodon, Lemmy, Usenet, and on and on. The truth is the S in SNS is always what social networks have been about.
And a lot of them failed for their technical shortcomings and many others from social aspects.
IRC failed in technical side due to the failure in committee development model around IRCv3, Reddit succeeded by sole social factor despite being a carbon copy of Digg. To me, Bluesky vs Mastodon, and also Twitter vs Mastodon situations seems closer to the latter, even with controversial waitlist and the big turmoil, respectively.
I actually like that IRC is less 'noisey' then most social media (I generally only hang on a few low volume channels) with no 'feed' being shoved at me, no algorithm deciding what I 'should' see. I bop into more popular channels as needed, but for general use, I find the self-directed nature of IRC to be the 'perfect social media' for me...eg I see only what I'm interested in.
I hate Electronification, WebNonsensification, Discordification, ... as much as the next guy, but median user age incrementing every year for past 10+ years -> fail to me.
