Bluesky is making it easier to know when someone is livestreaming or when a live NBA event is happening with a new test that adds a red border to profile pics, along with a “live” callout below it. When you click a profile picture with that indicator, you’ll be taken out of Bluesky and to whatever live event is being promoted.
is a former weekend editor who covered tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020.
Bluesky COO Rose Wang announced yesterday that the feature was being tested for both the NBA’s new account on the platform; she added later that the test extends to the WNBA, too, as TechCrunch points out. Today, Bluesky says the badge will also appear for “a handful of accounts” when they post links to livestreams, including on YouTube and Twitch. It added that it plans to tweak the feature based on feedback before it launches it to all users.
“We aren’t trapping you in Bluesky,” Wang wrote in her post yesterday. “We want you to use Bluesky to discover what’s happening.”
In the context of sports, Wang’s post feels like a dig at the various deals Twitter made with sports organizations like the NFL, MLB and NHL, and the NBA to stream their content on its platform, rather than linking out to their streams elsewhere. In an interview with SportsPro last month, Wang said Bluesky doesn’t have the means or desire to take on partnerships like those, but the new live badge testing for the NBA shows it’s certainly not above doing what it can to nurture its burgeoning “Sports Bluesky.”
Update May 19th: Added that Bluesky is also testing the feature for livestream links.
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