Bluesky’s “Starter Packs” feature, which offers curated lists of suggested users to follow, has become a popular tool for helping people connect on the social network. Its popularity has now caught the attention of X, which is copying the idea. X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, announced that the Elon Musk-owned app will soon introduce its own version called “Starterpacks.”
The new X feature is designed to help users find accounts matching their interests across categories like News, Politics, Fashion, Technology, Business & Finance, Health & Fitness, Gaming, Stocks, and Memes. There is a key difference from Bluesky’s approach. While anyone on Bluesky can create and share Starter Packs, X has compiled its lists internally. Bier explained that the company spent months scouring its data to find top posters in every niche and country to build these packs, meaning they are based on X’s internal metrics rather than personal user recommendations. The Starterpacks are expected to roll out to all X users in the coming weeks.
Suggested user lists are not a new concept for X. They have been part of the platform since its earliest days when it was known as Twitter. As an interest-based social app, Twitter users often sought to connect with people who shared their ideas, not just friends. To facilitate this, Twitter provided a list of suggested users to follow. This early feature was controversial because being added to the list could massively boost a user’s popularity and follower count, a system many viewed as unfair. This led Twitter to revamp the list in 2010, shifting from editorial selection to algorithmic determination.
X is not the only platform drawing inspiration from Bluesky’s Starter Packs. Meta’s Threads began testing its own user-curated version in December 2024, displaying these collections to new users and within feeds. Additionally, the decentralized network Mastodon has been developing similar “Packs” to aid in user onboarding.