Why the Liverpool Echo has joined Bluesky and how you can follow us

The Liverpool ECHO has decided to join Bluesky, as millions make the move to the social media platform. Last week, we began posting on Bluesky and have seen our following grow - and you can follow us there too.

The official Liverpool ECHO account username is @liverpoolecho.co.uk, and we've created a starter pack that includes all of our journalists who have joined the platform so far. At the time of publication, almost 20 million people have signed up to Bluesky and the number continues to grow daily. It is becoming an increasingly important space for news.

You will see us distributing our content on Bluesky and being more engaged with our followers as we continue to grow. The ECHO will also post some of the brilliant pictures and videos that our photographers and reporters capture around the Liverpool City Region.

The Liverpool ECHO will remain on X, formerly Twitter, as we continue to use it as a news-gathering source and to distribute our content to more than 580,000 followers. A number of reporters have decided to focus more on growing their Bluesky profiles and said that they plan to use that platform more in the future.

Liverpool ECHO political editor Liam Thorp, who was the first of our journalists to join, said: "Twitter (X) has been an immense tool for me in my career as a journalist. It was always the first place I would share stories and ideas. It was also a brilliant news-gathering forum for me, with people regularly sending me tip-offs and important information via direct messages and highlighting posts in my notifications.

"Unfortunately, for the past year or so, this has not been the case. X has become a difficult place both to cultivate my journalism and to be a journalist in general, with posts often being met with either vile abuse, spam or bots. For me X is now much harder to use for news-gathering and distribution and it provides an increasingly unpleasant experience.

"So far Bluesky has felt more positive. It is early days in terms of widespread usage but it appears to be a place where people are keen to engage, share thoughts and offer interesting perspectives. It feels like a promising new space for news and journalism and I'm excited to see where it goes from here."

Liverpool ECHO Audience Editor Paul Philbin said: "From a personal point of view, I will be spending more time on Bluesky than Twitter (X). I still follow a lot of interesting people there and want to see what they have to say and engage with them but they're yet to make the move.

"Following the aftermath of the tragic attacks in Southport in the summer, we saw a rise in referral traffic on the ECHO from X. During the riots, we would see huge spikes in our audience. But, with that, came a lot of vile responses towards our reporters. We also saw a lot of disinformation and misinformation spreading like wildfire on X and and, personally, that was when I first felt we needed a new platform. So far the experience on Bluesky has been positive."