BlueSky CEO Jay Graeber will step down from his top leadership position and move into a new role as chief innovation officer, the company announced Monday.
Toni Schneider will replace Graber, who helped grow the X and Threads competitors to 43 million users and the development of the underlying AT protocol, as interim CEO. Mr. Schneider is the former CEO of Automattic and a partner at True Ventures
Automattic and True Ventures are both Bluesky investors.
In a blog post announcing the changes, Graber explained that as a more mature company, Bluesky needs “experienced operators focused on scaling and execution.” Graeber said he feels he is better suited to building Bluesky’s technology itself.
“Exploring new ideas, bringing visions to life, and helping people discover their strengths is what gives me the most energy. Moving into a more focused role where I can do work that brings me energy is my way of putting that belief into practice,” Graeber said.
The company said its board of directors will search for a permanent chief executive officer. Meanwhile, Schneider’s experience at Automattic, which commercialized WordPress open source technology through WordPress.com, has given him an understanding of the challenges involved in balancing open source technology with a company’s profit-generating needs.
Under Graber, Bluesky experienced impressive growth after a number of changes to the platform’s products and community, particularly with Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X). Bluesky has also struggled with moderation issues as it has scaled up. While some users expected the company to apply stricter measures, Bluesky promoted the use of moderation tools that users can manage themselves.
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The company is now facing new challenges. This is in compliance with the ever-increasing age guarantee laws related to social media. One such law in Mississippi led Bruski to choose to completely lock down the state. Other state laws, including Ohio, South Dakota and Wyoming, require the company to begin age verification. For those interested in building new protocols for social networking, these compliance battles are probably not very interesting.
In a blog post, Schneider touted the company’s growth to over 40 million users and an ecosystem of over 500 active apps. He said the focus going forward is on the next phase of growth, including allowing third-party builders to flourish. Mr. Schneider will continue in his role with True Ventures during this transition period.
“BlueSky solves a problem that has plagued the industry for years: how do you build a social network that has the best of both worlds? The personal freedom and ownership that comes from being part of an open network, and the immediacy and ease of use that people expect from modern social services,” Schneider wrote.
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