Brian: 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Mindful Bytes podcast.

Olivia: 0:03

Today we're going to talk about the new Blue Sky social app and are you experiencing social media burnout?

Brian: 0:12

All right, well with that, let's go ahead and dive on in Today, okay? So, hey, let's go ahead and introduce each other. We should take a time of actually introducing each other. That would be very interesting how that turns out.

Shawna: 0:26

Okay, okay. So you have to give us time to prepare. So the first episode next season we can have introductions ready.

Brian: 0:33

I love that idea, though, but I think that's the thing that's supposed to be the fun part about podcasts, right, I mean that. It's like on the fly it's raw, not no, we're not live. We're not about live tv all right, well, we'll go ahead. We'll keep it as normal, but hey, when we start like, this is the last episode of the season, so when we start the new season, we're gonna switch it up some. What do you think about that?

Shawna: 0:57

yeah, I like it.

Brian: 0:58

We'll cause some confusion so let's go ahead and let Shawna introduce herself first.

Shawna: 1:03

Oh, okay, what am I going to be today? Okay, I know what I am. Hey everybody, I'm Shawna and I am your electronically unimpressed Xennial.

Ashton: 1:13

I'm Ashton, your Gen Z gadget enthusiast.

Olivia: 1:17

I'm Olivia, your social media obsessed, millennial.

Brian: 1:21

I'm Brian, a Gen X business leader. There we go, Let just leave it at that. And digital strategist.

Shawna: 1:26

So all right, olivia, after all this time, we still can't get our introductions right. That's kind of the fun part of it, right? It kind of is.

Brian: 1:34

Well, Olivia, I'm excited to hear about this new social media app because it's called what is it? Blue Guy? Blue Guy, Is that what it is? Blue sky, blue sky, okay, okay. So first, I guess, before you explain to this, explain this new platform. I have not heard it. I know you're already shocked, but Gen X here. So, but why blue sky? Why not like sunny sky, or you know? I don't know, why did they go with blue sky? Is there a reason?

Olivia: 2:07

Is there a meaning behind that name? There is, but I don't know offhand. The creator of it. That's such a genetic question.

Brian: 2:22

That says perfect, I can find that at a later time Is it created by the Blue man Group. You know the Blue man Band thing, the Blue Sky.

Olivia: 2:36

Yeah, it is actually.

Ashton: 2:38

So you have heard of it. Is that what we're talking about it?

Shawna: 2:41

is actually.

Brian: 2:43

Tell us about this new app. I'm interested to know about it. Should I go ahead and leave everything now and go do Blue Sky?

Olivia: 2:50

So, ashton, have you heard of Blue Sky?

Ashton: 2:54

at all. I have not.

Olivia: 2:56

Okay, so Blue Sky I'm just going to read it straight to you of what it is is an open social network that gives creators independence from platforms, developers the freedom to build and users a choice in their experience. And this, actually um, was developed by Jack Dorsey, who used to own Twitter. So him and this other guy, jay Grabar, I think, is how you say his name they are the ones behind this app and since the election it has gone up by 500%. It's been growing a million users per day, so it just hit 20 million users since the election, which is pretty crazy.

Shawna: 3:57

What was the catalyst for that? Why did the election affect it so much?

Olivia: 4:03

Elon Musk and his ex and all of that because there is apparently like a mass exodus of Twitter, slash ex right now, just because of Elon's reputation or whatever it may be. But this actually was released in February. But this actually was released in February, but it was invite only, so I don't know exactly when it became public. But that's why we're hearing about it now, because it's finally public. And the cool thing that I've noticed so far, which I want to ask in a little bit, brian and Ashton, you probably know more about, like the open source and stuff like that. I have no idea what any of that means.

Olivia: 4:58

I was excited because, okay, number one, people are calling this Facebook, when facebook was actually fun. So, in an early stages, where people are like, whoa, this is cool, um, I. What I think is really cool is there are multiple different feeds that you can have and you can curate them. So like, for example, there's a feed where it's just a feed, that of people that you have mutual follows. So like, if you both follow each other, you can share a feed. There's also a feed, um, if you just want to see stuff about books, about art, about science, about, um, there's bird, like I like it because it kind of gives you if you really want to look at new stuff, you can look at your news feed. But if I just want to go on there and enjoy it and not get out of that headspace, you can go on there and enjoy it and just, you know, be social or whatever it may be. Um, so that's what. Oh, go ahead, brian is is there?

Brian: 6:18

is it what I love this idea? Because, like, so what you're saying is like I could create a I could have my friends feed where I'm seeing my friends post, and but I could create a feed just for business.

Olivia: 6:29

That would be business stuff that I could see yeah, like business, either like news accounts that you follow, or even, yeah, like that sort of thing.

Brian: 6:39

And this is interesting, which I don't know, oh sorry go ahead. That's right. Can you set your default feed, or is it always like a um?

Olivia: 6:49

it looks like it has two default feeds. One is there is a discovery feed and then the other one is just your actual feed, and then over to the side, you can toggle on different feeds that you want to see.

Ashton: 7:03

This is really interesting. I just downloaded the app I'm working on it too it. It looks like kind of to describe the user interface a little bit it looks like a mashup of reddit and twitter. It's really interesting and I love that it doesn't have short form on it, like short form video okay.

Olivia: 7:22

So, speaking of that, it's hilarious. So they did a thing that said like check out or be a part of blue sky short, but it was literally short that said blue sky on it, so it was almost poking fun at everyone talking about short form video. Their release of short was literal short, so that's like right up your alley, brian doing something like that.

Brian: 7:54

So I did see that when we download the app it does have an option right at the beginning to choose service like choose your host, Choose your host, that's your blue host. Yeah.

Olivia: 8:04

See, I don't know what any of this stuff means, so I'm just like I just want to go on there and look at. But for people you know, like Ashton and Brian, who are more into kind of development type things from what I'm hearing, because it's what open source is that, I think, what it's called, or whatever- yeah, it is open source, yeah and like decentralized and um yeah, so I don't know what that kind of stuff means.

Brian: 8:42

In regards to like, could it potentially become how facebook is, and then we're all like I'm tired of this type of thing yeah, I think that there's a lot to go in there, too, about I don't know, ashton, if you have anything that you want to add about the like choosing your own cloud server, or whatever.

Brian: 8:59

I think that has a lot to do with the like, the like you said, the decentralized stuff. I don't know a lot about that. I know some people that do so. Maybe we could have them on at the new year to talk about that, but I know it's almost having more of ownership of it yourself, like putting it on your own server, so it's not relying on that. It looks like I can tie it up to my own domain name, so I could have, instead of saying, you know, go follow me on blue sky, I could possibly this is just me thinking, what my mind just quick glance I could actually say follow killer B on, you know, at socialkbdigitalcom, and that's the server that I could set up and have it run off of that Our actual server instead of their server, from my understanding.

Ashton: 9:48

So, yeah, what it looks like I'll have to do some research on this. What it looks like is, instead of all the account information of your account information being logged on their servers, it will be moved to your own hosting service of your choosing.

Olivia: 10:05

And so that includes like pictures and things like that. Yeah, it looks like it's going to archive your posts there, it'll look like it'll archive your posts there, which would be huge.

Ashton: 10:18

So that's what it looks like. I need to fact check all that. No, you're fine.

Olivia: 10:24

I was just going to say. So do say, since you know more of this stuff, do you see this as a huge draw to use? I know you don't necessarily use social media a ton, but just putting yourself in the headspace of like being able to do this type of thing, do you think this will be a huge draw for people?

Ashton: 10:51

yeah, I think. So. It'll really depend on how they curate their platform. If they're trying to go more towards the, the twitter and or the X and threads users, if they're specifically targeting them, or if they are going to target all social media, if they're going to try and take on Facebook and Instagram and Reddit and any of the other platforms, that's going to be the big, the big thing. I definitely see it taking off as a threads and x replacement, but we'll have to see that that'll kind of be like what they gear it towards. If they're going to make it where, uh, images will be really easy to view, just like instagram, like it's a image-based platform or so here's see, here's you.

Brian: 11:43

Here's you something to think about. I took what they're like when I chose and to learn more about this service again. This is really quick. You can't just take it as like this is uh concrete. I took that and I asked chat gpt. I was like, hey, I'm gonna give you some text. I want you to just really quickly give me a summary of what this means for someone that doesn't understand the tech side of it. So it says self-hosting. A Blue Sky PDS means you set up and manage your own server to store and control your data, while still being able to connect and interact with others using the Blue Sky network. It gives you more ownership and flexibility over your data or your data, instead of relying on a third party provider, which we know that that's a big deal of people. Like you know they're collecting my data. This gives you more control over that. So that can be very interesting to see how this this plays out.

Shawna: 12:37

So, Olivia, what is your username?

Ashton: 12:41

It is live, social, livsocial do you want me to edit that out? You can leave it in.

Brian: 12:55

I don't.

Olivia: 12:55

Yeah, I need friends on there, I'm lonely mine is leader of Gen X.

Ashton: 13:07

Gen X leader.

Olivia: 13:09

Shawna, what do you see as you're on there, quickly, like, as like you, I'm not all excited about the the open, because I don't even really know what it means, but from like a, you like a, xeniel. Is there anything that's exciting to you about this new app?

Shawna: 13:35

that's exciting to you about this new app. Yeah, I really like the idea of having different feeds for different reasons. I love the idea. If you are interested in just looking at cat videos for 15 minutes or something, you can do that, because that's one of the problems. One of the things that frustrates me about Facebook is, you know, if I've decided I'm going to spend some time like zoning out for a little while and I want to scroll some fun things on Facebook, then everybody annoys me with their political opinions and they're complaining, and you know then it's completely gone against why I even got on there in the first place.

Shawna: 14:09

You know, not able to control what I'm consuming. So then a lot of times I don't even use Facebook for that reason anymore. But when you were talking about this is going to show my zenial age when you were talking about when Facebook was exciting, I didn't really even have that experience as much as I had that with MySpace. So when you started talking about that, it took me back to when we got on MySpace and it was so fun and so exciting and there were more things you could customize on MySpace than Facebook. So, you know, you could have music playing, you could, you know, choose different themes for your profile. It was just it felt like a lot more opportunities to be creative than what Facebook has turned out to be. So, yeah, I think it's exciting. I like the idea. I mean, like you, I don't understand, you know the data part of it, but I mean it sounds like a good thing from what I can tell.

Olivia: 15:06

Ashton, like what can you explain to like someone like me or Shawna that doesn't necessarily understand what open source means? What does that?

Ashton: 15:17

mean. A really, really simple way to put it would be if the code is available to the public, anybody can go read the code. If they think there's a virus in it, they can go read the code for themselves and see oh look, there's no virus in this code. While something that isn't open source is usually contained, it's usually not left the company or a certain association People don't always trust, like a lot of tech. People don't always trust not open source because we don't know what they're hiding. A bank, for example, would have not open source software Makes sense. They need security. So that's kind of what it is.

Brian: 15:55

summed up it allows the community to be able to build upon it too. In some cases, like WordPress, wordpress is an open source content management system, so you have a lot more developers because it's open source, so people can develop and add things to it or adjust code as well.

Brian: 16:11

So, yeah, that's a very good, quick, quick explanation on that yeah, that's great ashton so, olivia, what are you seeing in the app itself, like, how long have you been using it right now and how does it compare to like other social apps like facebook, tiktok, instagram, stuff like that, like, how are you seeing so right now?

Olivia: 16:30

I've only started using it this week, really, but it to me feels very Twitter-esque. Okay, but which is interesting, because I did find out where the name Blue Sky comes from, and it was originally the placeholder name for the project started by twitter to build an open social protocol. So, um, and if you kind of notice, which I was noticing, the the logo of blue sky is a blue butterfly, which twitter's used to be a blue bird, so it's like true smart um, that's pretty cool and sauna will get on it just because of the blue butterflies.

Brian: 17:18

She'll do it just because of that.

Shawna: 17:19

That's it I already did for that exact reason.

Olivia: 17:25

um, so the thing that I also think is going to be, which we kind of talked about, is that they talk about how custom feeds on Blue Sky are the first implementation of algorithmic choice, like we don't have to follow their rule, like someone's rules. To me, that's what it sounds like. So instead of using a single black box for your algorithm, you can create and subscribe to your own. So I feel like it. To me, it just feels like I have more control which I believe Shawna has mentioned too, to over my experience versus having to be at the hand of you know, zuckerberg, love you, zuckerberg, but you control my feed.

Ashton: 18:22

So do you think this is going to really help with social media burnout? Do you think this is going to help not cause as much of that? Because people can curate their own library, their own feed.

Olivia: 18:35

I think it could, because of exactly what Shawna was talking about. If I am having a bad day, I want to go and watch. My favorite platform is TikTok, but if I go on TikTok to look at fun things, a political or any sort of thing can easily pop up and then I'm down this different hole that I didn't expect to go or want to go on. So I feel like this could even help and you can speak into this, brian. But even from a business standpoint, I'm seeing putting out content that we really want to put out, without having to fall into all these rules and parameters to fight with an algorithm yeah, I, I hope that.

Brian: 19:35

I hope that is the case, because that will be huge for businesses on this platform.

Brian: 19:37

Because, you know, I think it was back in like 2016 or something like that where it all changed, where basically, they started pushing the pay you know, pay to play, uh and all these businesses put so much effort into doing the work to gain all the connections with their audience and they knew they could put out a post and, no matter what, whenever they open up the phone, their followers were going to see that post.

Brian: 19:58

But when they changed that, I think it was like less than like I mean way below 10%. I think it's like 3% or something like that. Now it's so low of your actual followers that will see that post because of other things that, like, these people already chose to follow you, like you've went through the hard work and that was kind of stripped away. So hopefully, I hope that is the case, because I think that'll be really big and I think a lot of businesses will be like hey, I can utilize this. Um, I was just checking too on. They do have a browser version which looks identical to twitter, so it's very yeah, it does yeah, yeah.

Ashton: 20:33

So one other question I have do you think that's going to help? I don't know exactly how their algorithm works, but assuming it's very similar to most other platforms, do you think it'll get a much higher playthrough rate? For example, like if you post a video, uh, on Instagram, you know, if your playthrough, if your average watch time is low, then your video is not going to do as well. The higher that is, the better it. Does you think that's gonna help curate a lot, or do you think they'll just not really involve that in their algorithm? Whoever wants to answer that?

Olivia: 21:11

either olivia or brian good, I didn't hear the whole question, sorry, I was um I thought you were asking I, I think, as of right now, that's probably not going to be a part of it, but, and and maybe they would even say that it's not going to be, but, as we know, with all of these things, it will be interesting to see how it evolves and different things like that. Um, and right now it doesn't look super graphic or video heavy, which again can. Also, how much time would we save if we could just type something out, you know, um, but my question with the open source and data, things like that, is are they not going to be able to have like advertisements on there? Then? Is that not a thing, or?

Ashton: 22:04

is it? Could it still be a thing? Okay, kind of like a, just a. So I already explained open source, but, like a really quick explanation of decentralized is kind of like if. Kind of like if you're putting your money in the bank, that would be like what you're doing to Facebook. You're putting your money in a bank and you trust them to keep your money safe. That's your data. You're trusting Facebook to keep your data safe. Decentralized allows you the opportunity to not give you or not to give them your data. You can keep the data for yourself and encrypt it yourself, but just like money you run that risk of. If somebody hacked you or broke into your house, they can just go to your safe and take that money out. So now it's your responsibility to keep your money or your data safe. If you don't have your data encrypted, if it's just sitting on your laptop, someone hacks you, they can just take that data. So it shouldn't affect advertising. I wouldn't think. Maybe you'll know a bit more about that, brian, but from my understanding it shouldn't.

Brian: 23:09

Yeah, I think it's more about your data itself. So if the advertisement is being run through that system, they're paying for that on there. Do they have advertisement on there right now, or that's still something that's probably not even on here yet?

Olivia: 23:20

I don't think so. Yeah, that's why I was wondering if if they're going to be the platform that says we don't have this or whatever.

Brian: 23:29

I do like how I see that their feeds.

Ashton: 23:38

I, whatever I do, like how I see that their feeds.

Brian: 23:39

I like how their feeds icon is a hashtag. Uh, so it's like really cool like, because we know hashtags have been changing and losing its effectiveness and they're like calling, they're like they're putting the connection of hashtags or like that's your feeds. I like how they're doing that visual like because that is what people are following. The feeds are these are the things you're following.

Ashton: 23:54

So, uh, so I have one question for you, brian. If, let's say, this platform didn't do any sort of advertisement, how would they be able to make money? Because I know some platforms may sell your data to get some extra money. Obviously, if they're trying to hold that trust and they're making the step to not do advertisement, they're probably not going to do that. So what's another way they could make money?

Brian: 24:23

I mean they could do it. I mean right now you have people that's, I mean even X and Facebook and Instagram's charging where you want to be verified so that they could do that route. And sometimes that gives you more features, like on Instagram, if I become verified, which I am right now but on my personal, since I'm verified, I get to be able to highlight a banner, an image and stuff for my link. So if somebody clicks it it stands out. So you get like little features and perks like that. So I mean that could be the route they take. But I about guarantee we're going to see ads in here at some point because that's it is a big way for them to make money. But, um, I think a big point will be for them to be able to make it where people can really choose what they want to see. Like people have been saying that and you know shouting that for a long time. Like I just want to see what my friends are posting.

Brian: 25:11

Like if a platform really does that, wow, they actually did it and look, it's probably blown up because because of that, uh, so it'll be very interesting to see. So I, I like that to see that it's kind of like tiktok I'm not tiktok, it's more like twitter um, so it'll be interesting to see how it goes. Uh, because I was wondering, like, is it a replacement for facebook, facebook, tiktok? But they're all still a lot different, but it definitely could be. That's going to give a huge competition for x and for threads threads. Yeah, I'm definitely interested in this blue sky. I'm going to check it out, olivia, because you know I've been messing with x, I've been messing with threads. I'm not really, I'm really a big fan of either one of them. So I'm going to check out blue sky, learn a little bit more about it. So thanks for bringing that to our attention.

Brian: 25:59

I know, I know we got to get ready to wrap up pretty soon, but I know we're also we're in the holiday season, we're like rolling Thanksgiving, we're getting ready to go into Christmas. So another thing that I know we're getting ready to take a break right now ourselves from the podcast. We'll be back. So we'll be resuming season two of the Mindful Bytes February, probably mid-February. So you guys keep an eye out for that, and I want to encourage everybody to enjoy their time with their family and friends during this holiday season. Uh so, olivia, with that, what are your thoughts about burnout and taking a break during this season? What does that look like? Is it even possible? Should we even do it? Is it, is it not right? Like, should people feel bad about taking a break?

Olivia: 26:48

oh my gosh, no. Number one um, I don't think, like a lot of the things that I was looking up, I don't think people realize what they're experiencing is actually burnout. So number one is really looking inward, or looking at people in your life and assessing like am I truly experiencing burnout? Because I think a lot of people will are actually experiencing it without realizing it. So if you don't know, you have a problem. You can't fix it. So yeah, just quickly, here are some things to look for in yourself or others. And also, I would say, if you are feeling burnt out, it's nothing to feel bad about, right, we get there with so many things and it's not something to be like shameful, shamed about or anything. Even if your job is like well, I work in social media, I shouldn't get burnt. Well, I work in social media, I shouldn't get burnt. Well, we all get burnt out. So some things to be looking out for.

Olivia: 27:59

These are like the top five signs, just really quickly. Number one if you just feel so overwhelmed, like when you sit down to like start your day, like this is for people that work in like social and digital. So if you're getting ready to work and you're just like, oh my gosh, I'm so overwhelmed, I don't even know how I function that's a good sign that you're probably burnt out on the social digital world. Another is feeling stuck or you have no motivation when it comes to creating content. So if you need to hammer out a bunch of things but I know I have gotten to the point where my brain it like feels like it doesn't even move. I'm like I don't even know how to think right now because it's just been used so much so if you're struggling to create content when you usually are able to like hammer it out pretty quickly and enjoy doing that, then that's probably a good sign that you're either burnt out or pretty close to it. And then another one is which? This goes along with the one I just talked about, but it's decreased productivity. So you're probably experiencing burnout.

Olivia: 29:28

If, again, you don't have the motivation to create, or you physically can't, or you're just feeling so overwhelmed that you can't even tackle your to-do list, that is a good indicator that you're experiencing burnout. And also if you're feeling cynical. So I know this happened to me in the past where I'm like oh, I hate, especially in 20. I hate social media. I never want to be on it again. But, like, I used to love it and it was my job.

Olivia: 30:03

But you get the burnout when you know you're feeling cynical about the work that you're doing, like what's the point of even doing this when it's just going to get overtaken by trolls or whatever it may be? And then, lastly, you can even experience physical symptoms, so like, maybe you're extra irritable. So in a work meeting or just brainstorming, like you might be extra sensitive or taking direction the wrong way. Also, you could be experiencing headaches from constantly being on your phone or looking at the computer and blurred vision or problems with your vision from constantly looking at the screen and even having trouble sleeping. So yeah, that was just a quick overview. If you want more details, you can go and read the full blog on Killer Bee's web. Killer, yeah, KillerBeeDigitalcom. Kb Digital, kbbdigitalcom, kbdigital, kbdigitalcom, kbdigitalcom.

Brian: 31:20

Yeah, we've changed the domain, so she's trying to get interested in that.

Olivia: 31:24

Yeah, yeah yeah, very true. But, yeah, I think, as managers of people as well, you need to be very vigilant. If your team members are experiencing any of those, it doesn't have anything to do with laziness or anything of the sort and truly, truly, let your social and digital people, when they're on vacation, let them be on vacation because they need time to recharge. And we know the end of the year I always say the end of the year the world basically dies because everyone's on vacation, so take that time to recharge your battery for the next year.

Brian: 32:14

I love that. I think that's a good way to close out this episode. You know, as a business leader, I would encourage any business leaders listening, like, if you're concerned, like well, if we're not, if we don't have them active on social media during this break, our business is going to fail or it's going to be a big problem. If that's the case, there's another problem already. So I would encourage, like, really lean into them, let them enjoy that time and take a time to you know, right around the corner after the holidays is New Year's and talk about New Year's resolutions. Be paying attention. Let your creative environment, where your team can share these feelings that they're having and see how you can come alongside them to help them, because if they're feeling burnout and they're having these thoughts, it's not actually helping them do the best for you as a business either and as leaders.

Brian: 32:56

I think it's great for us to become more aware of that and be there to help, support them and show them like it doesn't need to be like this. We want you to take a break. That only helps your business as well. So with that, everybody, thank you for tuning in to the Mindful Bytes podcast today. Make sure, if you enjoyed this. You enjoyed this episode. Click review. Leave us some feedback and we would love to hear from you too. So click that link in the show notes to text us any questions you might have or any thoughts. We would love to hear from you and with that we hope you guys have a great holiday with your family and friends and we'll see you in February.