The link collection tool Sill is now available to all Bluesky and Mastodon users, the app’s creator Tyler Fisher announced on Friday.
If you remember the news aggregator app Nuzzel, you’ll be familiar with the basic concept of Sill. (Twitter shut down Nuzzel after acquiring the startup that operated it, Scroll, in 2021. People miss it.) In short, Sill shows the most popular links being shared by accounts you follow on Bluesky and Mastodon.
For most Nieman Lab readers, that means your Sill experience will include a lot of news. On Monday, my top story was a ProPublica piece about a third woman who has died under an abortion ban in Texas. Another top story was about a startup called Spines that seeks to “disrupt” the publishing business by using AI to publish 8,000 books in 2025. Click on “Shared by 9 accounts” and I could see the individual posts — or skeets and toots — with what people said about those links.
You can sort by “newest” and “most popular,” hide reposts, and limit posts to the last 3, 6, 12, or 24 hours.
Why the name Sill? Fisher started with the idea that the tool is “a window into your social network” and looked for domain names that might be available. (“Obviously, ‘windows’ was taken.”)
Fisher, a journalist and independent developer, was most recently the chief technology officer at the nonprofit newsroom The 19th, and previously held roles at the Washington Post, News Catalyst, Tiny News Collective, Politico, and NPR. He said he started a personal Mastodon instance soon after Elon Musk bought Twitter and joined Bluesky back when the social site was invite-only but, until recently, was still lurking on X for people who hadn’t made the switch. He deactivated his Twitter account a few weeks ago and, with Bluesky surpassing 20 million users, is fully committed to making the alternative social sites work.
“The ecosystem of third-party tools around these two networks is pretty nascent,” Fisher said, “and I want to contribute to making that more robust.” He started with what he remembered Nuzzel doing well — link aggregation and email notifications — but has made improvements on the predecessor, too.
“Nuzzel didn’t really evolve with Twitter,” Fisher said. “It didn’t handle quote tweets or retweets well. You’d sometimes see the same post six times in a row. I worked hard on consolidating that stuff and making the posts on Sill feel as native as possible to the platforms they are coming from.”
Some social sites algorithmically suppress external links or limit their use in prime app real estate — not great for journalists and news orgs trying to distribute their work. Fisher described Sill, on the other hand, as a “link-forward platform.”
“One thing that’s frustrated me about social media at large over the past — not just two years, but decade — is the death of the link,” Fisher said. “On Instagram and TikTok and YouTube and Twitter and Facebook, the link is deprioritized in favor of keeping you on the platform at all costs. I feel like that’s had disastrous consequences for journalism and art and the fundamental nature of the web.”
“Sill is about elevating the link,” he added.
Fisher built Sill knowing that some people use social media as a primary news source. Allowing people to keep up with the news and main character of the day is a primary reason Nuzzel was so beloved.
“To do that directly within these platforms, you sort of have to remain glued to your feed or you miss it. I think we’ve all had the experience of opening a social media app after a long break and having no idea what anybody’s talking about, right?” Fisher said. “I think what people really want is tools that help them make sense of it all — and Nuzzel was always really great at that. It leveraged all the effort and knowledge you put into building your network, and turned it into something quick and digestible and actionable. It respected your time, and I think people really appreciate that.”
Sill had about 300 people in its private beta. Fisher spent much of that period preparing the site’s infrastructure to scale up. Before Sill emerges from public beta, Fisher wants to make sure the finances are lined up, too. (Sill currently costs a few hundred dollars a month to run, not counting initial startup expenses such as forming an LLC and hiring a lawyer to generate a privacy policy.)
Fisher is committed to keeping Sill open source and free for use of the basic web client but — based on feedback and observing usage — plans to introduce paid plans with additional features early next year. Some of the examples he gives are customized email alert systems, support for custom feeds, account analytics, and the ability to connect multiple accounts from the same network. If Sill is adopted widely, Fisher also sees the potential for Sill to be a useful resource and data set for newsrooms, academics, and researchers.
For most people, Sill already can act as a time-saver that’ll let you keep up with your network without being glued to social media. For reporters, specifically, Fisher sees additional advantages.
“A lot of individual journalists, in my experience, on their social media are building their network around their beat. It’s not just other journalists, but experts in their field, maybe sources. Sill can help you distill what they’re talking about, what they’re interested in, and that can help you frame your next story,” Fisher said. “It can help journalists see what’s really resonating with people. What do they have questions about? What do they want follow-ups on? I think Sill can help you answer those questions at scale.”
