Recent updates in the ATmosphere - ATmosphere Report #132

Small note beforehand: If you've followed me before, you likely know that I write a weekly ATmosphere Report with all the news about Bluesky and the ATmosphere every week, over at connectedplaces.online . These weeks I'm switching it up a little, by splitting the report up into smaller parts and publishing them separately. The entire ATmosphere Report will still be published (and emailed) at the end of the week as well.

With that, here is all the atproto software news and updates of the past week or so:

Paperbnd is a new book review platform on atproto, with all the features you'd expect from a GoodReads alternative. Paperbnd focuses on interoperability with culture review app Popfeed , by using the same lexicons. It is made by the same developer, and it is effective a book-only version of the platform. The main challenge with review platforms on atproto so far has been getting sustained usage by people. Splitting the Popfeed app into a separate place for books might help here with branding, and by using the same lexicon it maintains interoperability and community growth.

BookHive.buzz is another book review platform on atproto, and they released their own iOS app recently. BookHive.buzz h uses a different lexicon than Paperbnd/Popfeed, making them not interoperable.

That both platforms (as well as Skylights.my, another culture view platform) use their own lexicons effectively leads to a splitting of the community over the platforms: you cannot see a review someone made on BookHive if you use the Popfeed app. There are roughly three outcomes here: (1) review platforms settle on a single shared lexicon to use, (2) review platforms display data from the other platforms in their apps, (3) the platforms stay separate. I'm curious to see which direction this will develop in.

Snowpost is a new writing platform on atproto that focuses on simplicity and ease-of-use. Snowpost is a minimalist execution compared to other writing platforms like Whitewind or Leaflet. It uses markdown, which is stored as a blob on your PDS.

Offprint is another writing platform that has been announced to be currently in development, with the explicit goal of taking on Substack. Offprint is not yet available, only screenshots of the design are shared. The space for writing platforms on atproto that want to take on Substack is definitely heating up however.

Back in May, Bluesky started testing a new feature for selected accounts to add their YouTube or Twitch livestreams, where Bluesky will show on their profile picture if they are currently livestreaming. This feature has now been expanded to include atproto streaming platform Streamplace.

Bluesky wants to know how much demand their is for an in-line translation feature.

Git collaboration platform Tangled allows users to self-host 'knots' , which are simple headless servers that store Git repositories. This means your entire codebase is not stored on your PDS, but on this independent server instead. Tangled has made some updates under the hood, which makes hosting a knot easier, and gives the Tangled AppView more independence and new features, such as showing trending repositories.

Writing and publishing platform Leaflet now supports comments on articles. These are not Bluesky posts, but are their own lexicon. Leaflet now also supports Youtube embeddings in their posts.

Bluesky client Anisota now gives users more granular control when it comes to muting accounts and keywords .