Bluesky has the juice right now, and while it’s slowed down a bit this week, they were adding over 1 million users a day for a bit last week. One sentiment I’m hearing a lot recently is that Bluely “feels like early Twitter,” which to be fair, I feel as well.

But you don’t have to look back too far to see this “it feels like early Twitter” sentiment thrown around for other networks. Here’s John Gruber about Mastodon in January 2023:

Mastodon.social feels like early Twitter both culturally (good), and fail-whale-wise (not good).

Here’s another one about Mastodon in November 2023:

I joined the social media platform Mastodon a year ago. Given recent turbulent social media trends, I’m glad I took the plunge. Having been on Twitter (yes, I know it’s been renamed “X”, sue me) since 2009, I’d describe Mastodon as the old Twitter.

An iconically early, here’s The Verge in 2017:

But for anyone who misses “the old Twitter” — the days of purely chronological timelines, no ads, and an inescapable flood of harassment — Mastodon can feel like a haven.

But it’s not just Mastodon, here’s a few quotes about Threads:

Threads feels like Twitter used to, many years ago, with features and options that are built with the hindsight of Twitter use over the past few years.

Threads right now feels like the early days of Twitter, back when it was fun and welcoming.

Threads felt like the old Twitter when it started too.

So yeah, the real question to me about new social networks isn’t really if they feel like the early days of Twitter, but what happens after they pass that first impressions period. In my opinion, Mastodon has leveled out to be a great place to talk with nerdy people (aka my core demographic!), Threads has turned into an engagement bait hell that I don’t enjoy browsing much at all right now, and Bluesky still has that “first week of school” energy. I don’t know how it’s going to play out in the long run, but the last few years have taught me that this “old Twitter” vibe will fade and the network will adopt its own identity.

But hell yeah, if you dig it right now, enjoy it while you can! Maybe it’ll last, maybe it won’t, but it’s so easy to get sucked into despair pits on the internet, so lean into what makes you happy.