What’s next for Bluesky? CEO Jay Graber on growth, community, and decentralization | Equity Podcast

Blue Sky's Rapid Growth and Starter Packs

• Blue Sky's rapid growth can be attributed to its "starter packs" feature, which allows users to create a list of accounts and feeds to add to a custom feed, making it easier for new users to join the platform and find their niche (1m5s).
• The starter packs feature was created to overcome the problem of new users struggling to find their place on the platform, and to make it easier for people to break network effects and join the platform all at once (1m46s).
• Blue Sky has reached 24 million users, with a significant growth spurt after opening up to the public in February, having previously been invite-only with around 3 million users (2m6s).
• Before the public launch, Blue Sky grew to 3 million users through an invite system, and then quickly grew to around 10 million users after the launch (2m30s).

Origins and Vision of Blue Sky

• Blue Sky's origins can be traced back to a paper called "protocols not platforms" written by Mike Masnick in 2019, which presented a vision of how social media could be different if platforms like Twitter were originally protocols or open platforms (3m14s).
• Jay Graber, Blue Sky's CEO, was pulled into the project as an outside expert on decentralized social networks, and was influenced by the "protocols not platforms" paper in shaping the vision for Blue Sky (3m1s).
• Graber believes that people need to be able to control the social networks they communicate on, regardless of whether that continues to be Blue Sky or another federated social platform (52s).
• The initial vision for Bluesky was to create a platform that could be built upon and modified by others, allowing for the co-evolution of the platform with changing values, and providing a potential solution to issues around moderation and free speech (3m27s).
• Mike is now on the board of Bluesky, having replaced Jack, and the company is steering towards the initial vision set forth in the early days (3m45s).
• The CEO of Bluesky is also the steward of the AT protocol that the platform is built on, allowing users to join other apps built on top of the protocol if they don't like Bluesky (4m4s).

The AT Protocol and Its Importance

• The AT protocol is described as a "toolbox for building social applications" and is modular and composable, allowing developers to use individual pieces or build a whole new app from scratch (4m18s).
• The CEO believes that driving growth and "dog fooding" the protocol by building a scalable app on it is the best way to get attention on the protocol and make it robust (4m55s).
• The original goal was to build just the protocol and get Twitter on it, but that didn't happen, and now the path towards protocol adoption is getting devs and users on board (5m9s).
• Having a lot of users in an open social graph and open APIs brings more developers who start to check it out, and there's a constant appetite for reinvention in the social media space (5m26s).
• Bluesky is built on an open foundation from the ground up, with everything being open source, protocols, and APIs, driving attention into the protocol ecosystem (5m51s).

User Choice and Control

• The design philosophy of Bluesky revolves around allowing users to "vote with their feet" and choose their own experience, rather than being locked into a single platform (6m13s).
• Users can choose to change defaults within the app or outside of it, giving them more control over their experience (6m32s).
• Blue Sky offers a unique experience where users can choose their own adventure, selecting who they want to see and who they don't want to see, and even having a following feed without certain individuals, such as Elon Musk (6m37s).

Funding Model and Avoiding the "Resource Curse"

• The current social media funding model, based on advertising, is seen as a "resource curse" that has led to the degradation of user experience, as social networks prioritize trapping users and pushing advertisements (7m17s).
• Blue Sky aims to avoid replicating this model by keeping things open, allowing users to pick different feeds and apps, and leaving the door open for competition (7m51s).
• Advertisers may still have a place on Blue Sky, but any advertising would need to be user-intent driven, aligning incentives with users and prioritizing user choice (8m10s).
• Alternative business models, such as subscriptions, are being explored, with the goal of adding value and getting money flowing through the ecosystem (8m46s).
• Subscriptions on Blue Sky may offer features such as custom domain names, but the exact details of the subscription model have not been announced yet (9m25s).
• The company believes that "money follows value" and is trying to follow the pull of the market in its development of new features and business models (9m5s).

Verification and Domain Names

• Verification has become a significant issue in social media due to concerns about authenticity and impersonation, with people being scammed or fake news being spread by individuals pretending to be someone they're not (10m25s).
• Verification is also about status, with people caring about what it means and who is giving it, and the current model relies on the app itself giving verification (10m46s).
• Bluesky's approach to verification is through domain names, where users can have a well-known domain as their username, building off the existing trust model of the web (11m8s).
• This approach solves the verification issue for some users, but not everyone, and the platform is actively discussing and seeking community buy-in for a more comprehensive verification system (11m50s).

Competition and the Philosophy of Digital Rights Activism

• Bluesky's competitors in the social media space include every app that doesn't give users the ability to leave and has a single centralized feed, with notable competitors being Elon Musk's X, Mark Zuckerberg's Threads, and Mastodon 2.0 (12m14s).
• Despite the competitive landscape, Bluesky's approach is focused on giving users the ability to "vote with their feet" and control their social networks, driven by a philosophy of digital rights activism (12m52s).
• The platform's goal is to make social media like the web again, with a focus on decentralization and user control, and to provide a alternative to centralized social media platforms (11m24s).
• The need for open social networks is vital infrastructure that can evolve along with society, allowing anyone to come in and start trying new models of curation and moderation, as centralized models can be limiting and put too much trust in one person (13m5s).

Success, Funding, and Investor Relations

• The business can be successful through both the growth of the Blue Sky platform and the development of successful apps on the AT protocol, and the company watches the market and takes advantage of opportunities as they come up (14m5s).
• Journalists and creators are finding success on the platform, with increased engagement, click-throughs, and sales, which is a positive and compelling reason for the company to continue providing this experience for users (14m21s).
• The company raised $15 million in Series A funding in October, and although they had about half as many users then, they are now getting attention from investors and are open to fundraising as a continual process (14m45s).
• The company values building relationships with investors over time and getting to know people, and they have had helpful early investors, such as an angel investor who used to lead the dev platform at Twitter (15m19s).
• When communicating with investors, the company is focused on growth, scaling, user retention, and their protocol vision, as well as the dev ecosystem vision, to show that they are following the demand of the market and have a clear direction (15m53s).

The Social App as a Lobby to the Open Social Web

• The social app is seen as a lobby to the open Social Web, bringing people in and providing a foundation for further development, with various projects and apps being built on top of it (16m17s).
• The experience in the lobby is being improved through content moderation, which is a necessary aspect of every social media platform (16m42s).
• A content moderation team is in place, using a combination of automated systems and human systems, with a stackable approach allowing others to run their own moderation services (17m3s).
• The moderation software used, called Ozone, is open source, allowing others to run their own versions and create custom labelers for users to plug in (17m18s).
• The approach to moderation prioritizes user choice and experience, with a focus on anti-harassment tooling and features such as opt-out quote posts and moderation of reply sections (18m13s).
• The goal is to create the best experience for the most people, while allowing for further customization and the option to leave the platform if desired (18m41s).

Content Moderation and the South Korea Event

• A recent event, the alleged coup in South Korea, was the first major breaking news event on Blue Sky, and the platform's content moderation team had to adapt to the situation (19m7s).

A Bold Approach to Social Media and the Future of Online Identity

• Bluesky aims to create a bold approach to social media by making it more like the open web, allowing people to build new sites and experiences, and standardizing core layers for long-term infrastructure (19m47s).
• The goal is for social media to become a stable and reliable part of people's digital lives, with apps and services coming and going, but core aspects like online identity remaining durable and portable (20m10s).
• Bluesky hopes to make online identity more like email or a phone number, allowing users to own and control their identity across different sites and apps (20m25s).
• The "at protocol" is envisioned as a protocol that will stick around, allowing users to give out their "at protocol" as their website or domain name, which will be linked to Bluesky and other apps built on the protocol (20m42s).
• This approach would enable users to connect with each other across different apps and platforms, even if they don't have the same app (20m55s).
• The vision for the next generation of social media is to create a decentralized and open system, where users have more control over their online presence and can build new experiences on top of a standardized infrastructure (19m52s).
• Bluesky's approach is seen as a bold and innovative way to address the challenges of social media, and the platform is being developed with the goal of creating a more sustainable and user-friendly online ecosystem (19m36s).