Bluesky is still competing with Twitter/X with over 3 million members and hopes to expand in the next few months. That hasn’t stopped the development community from supporting the initiative and offering solutions for users who are abandoning Twitter, which Elon Musk now controls. Deck.blue, a Bluesky-flavored clone of Twitter’s famous (but often overlooked) TweetDeck, became a subscription service last year and is now called X Pro.
Like TweetDeck, deck.blue lets Bluesky users see social media items in columns, including their home timeline, notifications, likes, lists, and custom feeds. Support for multiple accounts and post-scheduling are also available.
Gildásio Filho, a 25-year-old software developer based in So Paulo, Brazil who also works on the music collaboration app Indaband, created the web-based deck.blue app. His partner, Japanese engineer Shinya Kato, handles backend infrastructure and API work.
Filho explains the deck concept. Blue started last year when X started charging for TweetDeck and shut him out.
“I made a promise to myself that if I ever got kicked out, I would build my own,” indicating TweetDeck.
Mastodon has a TweetDeck-inspired web interface that was first-party designed and “actually pretty good,” Filho found after reviewing Twitter alternatives. He was disappointed by Bluesky’s current user experience. His Twitter TweetDeck experience was not replicated.
“I need a TweetDeck to use Bluesky. I can’t use it without it; it doesn’t work,” Filho says, echoing many former Twitter power users’ complaints about switching platforms.
Deck.blue started a month after creating its first line of code in August. The software was originally called Bluesky Deck, but Bluesky advised against it. Renaming the software deck.blue, Filho engaged a designer to brand it.
Deck.blue has added new features as soon as Bluesky makes them accessible to the community since its introduction. This happened with hashtags, list support, and the app’s scheduling function. As one of the first third-party applications to enable hashtags, deck.blue’s Blueskly post went viral with 1.5K likes and hundreds of reposts. (Bluesky’s definition of viral is narrower owing to its tiny viewership.).
Deck.blue targets power users rather than social media administrators who need analytics and reporting like Fedica and Postpone, which offer scheduling for Bluesky, Threads, X, and other social networks.
After adding multi-account functionality, online sync, and Patreon integration a few months ago, Filho wants to make some additional money to support deck.blue. Patreon lets dedicated users fund the service for $2 to $7 per month, less than TweetDeck, which now demands an X Premium or Premium+ membership ($8 per month and more).
Filho expects Bluesky to grow despite its much smaller user base than X.
“When they launch and remove invite codes, I fear the potential growth,” he adds. I suppose Bluesky is losing users without invite codes. Once they drop it, I’m not sure I can handle customer support alone, he says.
