X copies Bluesky with a “Starterpacks” feature that helps you find people to follow

However, unlike Bluesky’s Starter Packs, which anyone on the platform can create and share with others, X created its own lists internally.

As Pierre explains in his post on In other words, the packages are based on X’s internal data — not on the personal recommendations of individual users.

Bier notes that Starterpacks will roll out to everyone on X in the “coming weeks.”

Suggested user lists aren’t new to X — they’ve been used on the social network since its early days, when it was known as Twitter. As one of the first interest-based social apps, Twitter users didn’t necessarily want or need to just find and communicate with their friends, as they did on other apps like Facebook. Instead, they wanted to find people whose ideas and interests aligned with their own. To help them get started, Twitter offered a list of suggested users who would make a good following.

However, this feature was controversial at the time because it greatly boosted users’ popularity and follower base when they were added to the list of suggested users. Others felt this system was unfair, prompting Twitter in 2010 to revamp the editorially created list into an algorithm-determined list.

X isn’t the only social app copying Bluesky’s genius idea of ​​Starter Packs. Meta’s Threads began testing its own version of Bluesky’s Starter Packs in December 2024, which were also curated lists created by individual users. These groups of suggested users are displayed to users when they first sign up for Threads and at other times within the For You feed. The decentralized social network Mastodon also recently developed “packages” to help onboard users.