When Jay Graber took the stage of TechCrunch In December 2024, his message was overwhelming: Bluesky is built “billionaire proof”. “The armor is in the design,” he said. “If someone bought Bluesky or broke, everything is open source. What happened to Twitter could not happen to us.”
With more than 24 million users after the US elections of 2024, Bluesky has become a serious alternative to X. It is not necessary to exaggerate and say that it is already at its height because it is not even much less, but at least there is one Alternative where there was practically only empty. The story of how to get led this little revolution is singular and contextualize your vision of social networks.
The origins
Born in 1991 in Tulsa, according to Forbeshis mother – a acupunturist who fled from the Chinese cultural revolution – gave him the second name “Lantian” (蓝天), “blue sky” in Mandarin. As he revealed Vanity Fairthis name represented a desire for “freedom without limits” for his daughter, born of his own experiences under an oppressive regime. His father, a professor of mathematics of Swiss origin, completed this multicultural environment that would mark his vision of the world.
The coincidence with the name of the company that now directs is casual, Jack Dorsy had already baptized the project as “Bluesky” before. However, it seems a something prophetic, especially considering the vision of freedom and openness that Graber would bring to the project.
After graduating in science, technology and society from the University of Pennsylvania, where The world He reports that he co -founded a student time bank, Graber worked as a engineer in Skuchain and in a factory welding Bitcoins mining equipment, before joining ZCASH in 2016.
As revealed in Decoder, This early experience with decentralized technologies was fundamental: “I have worked a lot of time in decentralized technologies and I have seen its limitations, but I also believe that there are many limitations in centralized systems.”
Bluesky’s birth
In 2019, while running Happening Inc., she was invited to a group of experts convened by Twitter. “He was one of the experts in a small chat room,” he recalled during an interview in Decoder, the podcast of The Verge. “I was very excited. At that time I worked in my own social app, and had been building decentralized social protocols, playing with them, doing a lot of research.”
In 2021 she was appointed CEO of Bluesky, already as an independent company. This independence was a key decision that she promoted. As she revealed, “I insisted that we separate as an independent company. If the captain changed or if that support disappeared, it would lose institutional support for Bluesky, and I really wanted this project to exist.”
“Jack had a vision of something better for social networks,” he explained to CNBC. “We are building an open source social network that anyone can take and build on it. No one has been so open or put so much control in the hands of users.”
In your conversation with DecoderGraber deepened this vision: “We want this to be the last social identity that you will have to createbecause you can move it between applications and services. You can carry your identity, your relationships and your data with you. “
According to data provided by Emily Liu, spokesman for Bluesky, to Newsweekthe platform added five million new users after the 2024 elections, mainly from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
This explosive growth, as reveals The country“after the escape flight from many users of X was intensified once the news was made public that Elon Musk had been appointed co -director of the Donald Trump government efficiency department.” It is not entirely clear if there was a stampery as such and what magnitude, but the dates of Bluesky users coincide with the post -election.
Monetization and leadership
The challenge is now monetization. In “The Big Interview” of WiredGraber announced Premium subscriptions for high quality and customization videos. The company has raised 36 million dollars, including 15 million capital blockchain. And sooner or later he will have to return that money.
“We are not going to build an advertisement algorithm that encloses users,” he told CNBC. With twenty employees and one hundred moderators, Bluesky bets on an alternative model. As explained in depth to Decoder, The platform is developing a “componable moderation” system which will allow users and communities to create their own rules and filters.
“We think about the ‘bus problem’,” he explained to Forbes. “We have blocked everything so open that we cannot degrade the experience because we have opened the market to entrepreneurs.”
This approach reflects The unconventional leadership style of Graber that, according to The country“He communicates directly with users, he is close and accessible. From his personal account, he writes threads explaining tricks to use better bluesky and usually reveals curious data with a sense of humor.”
Rose Wang, Bluesky Operations Director, who met Graber in 2018 during a car trip to Lake Tahoe, describes her way of leading: “What does Jay so special is that in addition to being collaborative is a visionary, capable of anticipating ten steps to what is to come. “
The future
Investor Mark Cuban told Forbes That Bluesky sees as a “really social” experience, although he made a nuance: his account in X has ten times more followers, a way of throwing a darting to the low penetration of the first against the second.
This disparity does not seem to worry about Graber, who in Decoder emphasized that the objective It is not to replicate the model of traditional social networks, but to create something radically different. Bueno.
The future is about to be written. As Graber he told Wired: “We are focused on offering a good experience while we climb.” In Decoderexpanded this idea: “We have to show the first people that this vision can work, which is fun, useful, better than the alternatives and also good for society.”
It is an objective that, curiously, honors the meaning of its second name, even if it is a purely casual connection. Bluesky’s vision seems to fulfill that desire for “unlimited freedom” that his mother expressed by appointing her Lantian.
Outstanding image | WorldOfSoftware, Wikimedia Commons
In WorldOfSoftware | Bluesky Start Guide: What is it, how it works, what are the feeds and how to configure it
