Bluesky adds long-form content support via Standard.site integration

On Thursday, the decentralized social networking startup Bluesky rolled out a new version of its application. This update integrates with Standard.site, a community project designed for building long-form content on the AT Protocol—the underlying decentralized technology that powers Bluesky. The integration allows Bluesky users to read long-form content, such as articles and newsletters, directly within the application, moving beyond the short microblogging posts that have characterized the platform.

By integrating with Standard.site, Bluesky is enabling its users to access content published across the “Atmosphere,” which is the broader network of applications powered by the AT Protocol. This network includes independent writing and publishing platforms like Leaflet, pckt, and Offprint. These services cater to writers who want to own their content and distribute it across the open web. This open-protocol approach stands in contrast to the model used by competitor X, where long-form content remains siloed within its own platform.

This update represents the second time Bluesky has expanded its capabilities by integrating with community-built projects. In February, a startup called Germ became the first private messaging service to launch directly from the Bluesky app. The new long-form integration also follows a similar move by WordPress, which recently announced a plug-in allowing its sites to publish to the Atmosphere. Like Bluesky, the WordPress integration relies on Standard.site to turn blog posts into data on the AT Protocol itself, making them readable by any compatible application.

Through these integrations, Bluesky can offer distribution to third-party developers by leveraging its network of some 44.5 million registered users. However, Bluesky still faces a massive scale gap compared to X, which maintains 550 million monthly active users. Additionally, while Bluesky’s open social model allows users to move between different personal data servers (PDS) provided by entities like Eurosky, Blacksky, and Northsky, X’s content remains locked within its own ecosystem.

Why it matters

Bluesky is leveraging the AT Protocol to build a decentralized alternative to X’s siloed long-form content, allowing users to access articles across the open web rather than being locked into a single platform.