Persistence of the network-proximity effect across platforms and time

Investigate whether the relationship between network proximity, exploratory attention, and tie formation observed on Bluesky persists in later periods of the platform’s development and on platforms where algorithmic ranking plays a more central role.

Background

The study finds that Bluesky interactions are strongly concentrated near users’ existing follow networks and that exploratory contacts beyond two follow hops are substantially less likely to result in new follow ties than local exploratory contacts. However, the analysis covers only the platform’s early growth period and focuses on a setting in which the default Following feed is reverse chronological rather than centrally algorithmically ranked. The authors therefore leave unresolved whether the observed association among network proximity, exploration, and subsequent tie formation generalizes as Bluesky evolves or to platforms with more prominent algorithmic recommendation systems.