I have been whining about the lack of analytical tools to measure how well my Bluesky posts are performing – this was one of the nice things about Twitter in the old days. But now I have actually found the lovely https://www.blueskypulse.io/ site which does everything I want, namely recording likes, reposts, replies, and quotes. From it I learn that my best performing post ever, with by far the most likes and reposts, is this sadly meaningless and now out of date statistic:
The other notable post from before this year was more commentary on the US election, which has been quoted more than any of my other posts:
The most replied-to past was one of this year’s, and I’ll get to it later.
I’m feeling self-indulgent, and this is my blog, so here are my top twelve Bluesky posts of 2025, by amalgamated rank of likes, reposts, replies, and quotes.
12) The kickoff of my Books Of The Year thread – not by the year I have read them, as one commentator thought (I was not around in 1846) but by year of first publication, for flexible values of ‘first” and ‘publication’.
11) The oldest known representation of the universe, seen in an exhibition in Leiden
10) Another astronomy post, but this time contemporary:
9) Commentary on one of this year’s Hugo kerfuffles.
8) One of the many incidents of US immigration
5) A quotation from Tolkien.
6) A more positive piece about the Hugo Awards.
5) current neolithic affairs in Ireland:
4) link to my best performing blog post of the year:
3) A Nobel Prize story:
2) A Hugo post that got the most replies of any of my Bluesky posts ever and the most quote-posts this year.
1) At the top, a happier little bit of trivia from the history of science fiction, which got the most likes and reposts of anything this year.
The list is a little more grouchy than I would like to think of myself as being, but it does include also two of my own photographs and links to two of my favourite pieces of those I published this year.
Many thanks to https://www.blueskypulse.io/ for enabling me to get these statistics together.