Stop Advertising The Atmosphere As Speculative Technology

Advertising Within the Atmosphere

For as long as atproto has been around, both Bluesky and the community around it has hyped it as a fundamentally new way of thinking about social media.

This also includes when people talk about how the Atmosphere allows users to "own their data". I wholeheartedly agree with this post by dame:

What I worry about, with the rhetoric I see in general, is that to a normal non-tech-involved person this all can come off sounding similar to how people talk about "speculative technologies", such as AI, blockchain, and self-driving cars. These technologies aren't well understood by the average user but a smart person can convince many people that some idyllic picture of the future that they paint is certain to come true. In reality, it rarely does like they think it will.

In the same way that people get skeptical of Elon Musk when he says Full Self Driving is coming "in two weeks" over and over for 4 years, people will be turned off to the Atmosphere if they think it sounds like "Web 3", "AI", or "blockchain", things that historically promise amazing advances to users only to be mediated by reality.

A better way to advertise the Atmosphere is to explain how certain features matter to users now, rather than having to convince them to care about certain features. The most obvious sell to existing Bluesky users is that joining this other Atmosphere app doesn't require a new account; you can use the same login as Bluesky. The utility of that is self-evident and immediate.

I actually think the second most effective talking point for the Atmosphere right now is that it's billionaire-proof. Not that you "own your data" or you can see Leaflet posts natively in Bluesky, but that some powerful person can't come along and take ownership of both a platform and your data on it, or the ecosystem as a whole. This is tangentially related to owning your data, but the framing is centered around what users know and likely have strong feelings about: the Elon Musk takeover (and subsequent destroying) of Twitter. It's better to tailor our rhetoric to what people already care about than try to sell them a future we don't know will exist.

Advertising Outside the Atmosphere

Up to now I've only talked about how to advertise that someone already in the Atmosphere should try this other app, but what about those who aren't a part of it yet?

My hot take here is that there are a few fundamental things that need to be addressed in the protocol and in the ostensible onboarding platform (Bluesky) before mass advertising should be attempted. The Atmosphere simply isn't ready for mass adoption yet. For more on that, read my most recent longer blog post here: https://ezras-thoughts.leaflet.pub/3mj7l4plmik2n.