The Great Twitter Exodus of 2022 is still happening. It’s just a little…fractured. A lot of X power users migrated to Bluesky early on, which paved the way for a flood of folks to join that service in 2024. Meanwhile, a lot of technically inclined individuals are still hanging out on Mastodon (at least, that’s where I hang out).

Bluesky and Mastodon are both decentralized services, in theory, but users of one service can’t really talk to users on the other—or it wasn’t possible before Bridgy Fed, anyway. It’s a beta service that makes it possible for Bluesky and Fediverse-compatible applications, such as Mastodon, to interact.

What is the Fediverse?

Let’s back up a little. Mastodon is part of the Fediverse, a collection of services that connect to the same protocol. Threads, another place where a lot of X users ended up, is starting to connect to the Fediverse; WordPress blogs can also connect. This all points to a future where people can use whatever social network they like and follow people who prefer to use a different one, with one problem: Bluesky, despite being decentralized, isn’t part of this network.

This is where Bridgy Fed comes in. With this service, individual users of either service can opt in to “bridging” their accounts. I tested this out with my friend and Lifehacker alumni Eric Ravenscraft, who hangs out on Bluesky more than me. It worked well—we can now see each other’s posts, like each other’s posts, and even talk to each other, cross-network.

Create your bridged account

Setting up the bridge couldn’t be easier: You just need to follow a particular account.

• Mastodon and other Fediverse users need to search for and follow the account @bsky.brid.gy (it’s easiest to just search for this—note that some Mastodon instances may be blocking the bridge).

• Bluesky users need to follow the account @ap.brid.gy.

That’s it! Bridgy Fed will now create an account for you that users of the other service can follow. You’ll also be able to find your account on the other service so you can share it with friends.

• If you’re a Fediverse user, your new Bluesky account will be @[user].[instance].ap.brid.gy. For example, my Mastodon account @jhpot@mastodon.social becomes @jhpot.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy on Bluesky.

• If you’re a Bluesky user, your new Fediverse account will be @[handle]@bsky.brid.gy. For example, Eric’s Bluesky account @lordravenscraft.bsky.social can be found at @lordravenscraft.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy.

That’s a little more complicated than I’d like—it would be great if the service sent a DM letting you know where you new “bridged” profile is, for example. Still, I was able to find my own newly created Bluesky profile pretty quickly, and I was also able to interact with Eric with ease. Here’s how the interaction looks from Mastodon, for me:

Credit: Justin Pot

And here’s how it looks from Bluesky, for Eric:

Credit: Justin Pot

Replies show up in mentions, the way they normally would, as do likes. If all you want is to be able to organically interact with someone who is using the other network, this works well.

An imperfect solution

While this solution works well, there are a few hangups. Chiefly, it only functions if both people bridge their accounts. This means I can’t see any comments from Bluesky users unless they also are bridged, and vice versa: During our little test, a few other Mastodon users responded to my conversation with Eric, but Eric could not see those replies. This make sense if you know how the system works—only comments from bridged users are bridged—but it’s hardly ideal, and can lead to asymmetrical conversations. Unfortunately, the opt-in nature of the bridging service makes this inevitable.

And there are other issues too: Bluesky has a 300-character limit for posts, for one thing, while the Fediverse doesn’t have a hard cap. As a result, some posts are cut short along the way.

I could pick at more threads (as opposed to Threads), but suffice it to say, this is far from a perfect solution. You can, and should, read the documentation to learn more. For the moment, though, it’s one realtively simple way for people who aren’t on the same decentralized social ecosystem to talk to each other, and I like that. I’ll certainly be bugging friends I want to interact with on Bluesky to “bridge” their accounts.