Subscribing to publications via atproto

We added a way to subscribe to publications via atproto!

This has two main parts:

How it works: writers

Share your publication; people can subscribe from its homepage or from any post.

When publishing new posts, you now have an option to post to Bluesky — this is what will show in subcribers' feeds, but you can turn off per-post if you like.

How it works: readers

Subscribe to any publication, and you'll see a link to add the "Publications" feed in Bluesky!

That feed will show any new posts from publications you follow.

Here's an example!

Our friend Jake is writing a wonderful new publication, Dreaming at the Edge of the Apocalypse, on theories of craft, interfacing with the natural world, cultivating community and more

He's written three great posts already — follow it here:

Current limitations

What was easy / what was hard

Surprisingly easy: creating Bluesky records, and getting data e.g. to see if users already have the feed added.

Surprisingly hard: oauth / managing auth state across custom domains…turns out this is a pain!

Why we started with atproto subscriptions

We wanted to focus on things that play well with Bluesky, as the largest (by far) existing atproto community, and do subscriptions in a way that's good for network effects in the atmosphere broadly.

Custom feeds are cool, but definitely not as direct a way to notify readers when you publish. More like RSS than push notifications.

We think both atproto and email subscriptions are important for what we're trying to do — atproto for social stuff; email for direct audience relationship.

What's next for subscribing?

Anything else we should add or consider here? As always we'd love to hear what you think.