Whatmosphere?

Almost everyone has a take already on the ATProto/Bluesky/ Internet handle login conversation.

Here's mine.

Bluesky is obviously the biggest and the most popular app currently in the atproto land and it will be for a considerable amount of time. Because of that, nothing the smaller and newer apps add to their login screens would truly land or catch up until Bluesky itself updates its branding to introduce a clear, shared term for accounts across the ecosystem.

I do understand that a lot of time and effort has gone into building the Bluesky brand. But if ATProto as a whole has to take off, then this change has to come from the top.

Bluesky has to be the one to name the shared term, set the guidelines and also use them consistently within their flow first.

If it were up to me:

Atmosphere Account

(Not even ATmosphere Account or @mosphere or AT accounts or handles. Although I'm a big fan of term atproto and the puns around it, but when it comes to the big picture, I feel it should be simple and easy for regular users to just get it)

At this point, " atmosphere " already seems to be the most widely used term for representing the broader AT ecosystem. Branding wise it wouldn't be too confusing to regular users if Bluesky starts including them in their app. Bluesky/Atmosphere feels close.

Bluesky should be open to reframing their onboarding language to mention that users are creating an Atmosphere account, not just a Bluesky account.

"Create a Bluesky Account"

should become

"Create an Atmosphere Account to login to Bluesky "

"Login to your Bluesky Account"

should become

"Login to Bluesky with your Atmosphere Account"

(These aren't exact words used on the the sign up or login flow for Bluesky, but you get the general idea)

Mainly, these should be called accounts not handles. Handles are something you get once you have an account.

Services and PDSes that host these accounts like Bluesky , Blacksky , Tangled , SelfhostedSocial etc could be called Account Providers (of course, there are lots of nuances between these setups, but I’m talking at a a zoomed-out user facing level; also they definitely shouldn’t definitely be called Hosting providers or servers)

This needs to happen first.

New users signing up for Bluesky and existing users already on the platform need to be exposed to this terminology consistently over time. Once that groundwork is laid, other apps in the ecosystem can follow the same language, style and branding.

Of course, this means Bluesky would be transferring some of its hard earned branding juice to the broader "Atmosphere" concept. Whether Bluesky PBC is willing to make that tradeoff is an open question.

Until this shift happens from the top down, new apps won't break out beyond devs and tech folks, and everything else will continue to feel like a subset of Bluesky rather than a part of the Atmosphere.