Forbes - How Jay Graber Is Making Sure Bluesky Never Turns Into Elon Musk’s X
Blue Sky, initially an open-source project at Twitter, aims to create a decentralized social media protocol. Led by Jay Graber, it focuses on user control and transparency, allowing users to create and subscribe to custom feeds. Unlike other platforms, Blue Sky avoids data-driven advertising strategies, opting instead for open-source development. This approach has attracted users disillusioned with platforms like Elon Musk's X, which prioritize controversial content. Blue Sky's user base has grown significantly, doubling to over 25 million users, and has influenced competitors like Meta's Threads to adopt similar features. Graber's leadership emphasizes user empowerment, allowing users to build their own systems for content verification and filtering, thus maintaining a user-first ethos.
Key Points:
- Blue Sky prioritizes user control over algorithm-driven content.
- The platform allows users to create custom feeds and systems.
- Blue Sky avoids traditional data-driven advertising models.
- User base has grown to over 25 million, influencing competitors.
- Graber's leadership focuses on transparency and user empowerment.
Details:
1. 🔵 Blue Sky's Celebrity Surge: From Launch to Fame
- Jay Graber is actively ensuring that Blue Sky remains distinct from Elon Musk’s platforms, indicating a strategic direction focused on differentiation.
- Graber is implementing unique platform features to enhance user engagement and attract high-profile users.
- Blue Sky's growth strategy includes leveraging partnerships and exclusive content to increase its appeal.
- The platform's user experience is being tailored to offer a more open and decentralized social media experience.
- Graber's approach has resulted in a notable increase in user sign-ups and high-profile endorsements, setting Blue Sky apart in the social media landscape.
2. 🎭 Drill's Departure: Critiquing Social Media Algorithms
2.1. Drill's Influence on Social Media
2.2. Critique of Social Media Algorithms
3. 🔄 From Protocol to Platform: Blue Sky's Evolution
- Blue Sky's potential lies in its ability to market itself as a refuge from ad bots, AI-driven content, and manipulative algorithms, positioning it as a strong alternative to platforms like Elon Musk's Twitter, which has been criticized for prioritizing irrelevant content over user-preferred feeds.
- Originally, Blue Sky was not intended to be a standalone app or company. It started as an open-source research initiative at Twitter, led by Jay Graber, aiming to create a protocol to facilitate communication between computers, especially for social media.
- The AT Protocol (Authenticated Transfer) was designed to allow Twitter and other companies to exchange information openly, enabling posts to be shared freely across various social media platforms.
- As Blue Sky evolved from a mere protocol to a standalone platform, it faced challenges such as establishing a distinct identity and user base. However, its focus on transparency and user control over content offers a unique value proposition in a crowded social media landscape.
- Blue Sky's transition signifies a shift towards decentralized and user-centric social media environments, challenging traditional platforms by prioritizing user preference and data control.
4. 🚀 New Beginnings: Graber's Vision for Blue Sky
- Twitter under Musk faced significant challenges, including an advertiser boycott and user exodus, which led to a strategic rebranding to 'X'.
- The team behind the protocol swiftly developed an app to showcase its potential, launching it as an invite-only social network in 2023, demonstrating the protocol's real-world application.
- Graber, who joined Blue Sky two years prior, has a strong background in both cryptocurrency and social app development, highlighting her strategic foresight and leadership capabilities.
- Her leadership is marked by proactive strategic planning and a focus on leveraging emerging technologies to drive growth.
- The protocol's launch was aimed at addressing the issues faced by traditional social networks, like privacy concerns and centralized control, positioning Blue Sky as a forward-thinking platform.
5. 📈 Rapid Growth: Blue Sky's Rise in the Social Media Arena
- Blue Sky raised $15 million in a Series A funding round in October, marking a significant milestone in its growth trajectory.
- At the time of the funding, Blue Sky already had a substantial user base of 13 million, indicating strong market presence and user engagement.
- Post-funding, the user base almost doubled to over 25 million, showcasing the platform's ability to scale rapidly and attract new users.
- This growth positions Blue Sky as a formidable competitor in the social media landscape, demonstrating effective user acquisition strategies and the potential for further market penetration.
- The influx of capital is likely to support further development and expansion initiatives, enhancing Blue Sky's competitive edge.
- Key factors driving Blue Sky's growth include innovative features, strategic partnerships, and a focus on user experience, which have contributed to its increasing popularity.
6. ⚖️ Balancing Act: User-Centric Philosophy vs. Profit Motives
- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is closely monitoring Blue Sky as it gains millions of users. To respond to this growth, Meta has been replicating several features in its own platform, Threads, which competes with Twitter.
- Blue Sky, on the other hand, is focusing on maintaining a user-centric philosophy. However, this focus presents challenges as the company also needs to satisfy investor profit motives. This balancing act could lead to potential conflicts between maintaining user trust and achieving profitability.
- To address these challenges, companies like Blue Sky could explore strategies such as transparent communication with users about business decisions, prioritizing ethical advertising practices, and developing features that enhance user experience while also being monetizable.
7. 🔧 Empowerment Through Open-Source: User Control at Blue Sky
- Blue Sky uses a user-first approach to social media by open-sourcing the app, allowing developers to build and customize social apps at scale.
- Users have the control to create and subscribe to any number of feeds, enhancing user choice and personalization.
- The platform allows users to build their own systems, such as verification processes or labeling systems for AI art, promoting user empowerment.
- Blue Sky does not follow traditional monetization strategies of collecting user data for advertising, differentiating itself from other social platforms.
8. 📊 Transparency in Advertising: Blue Sky's Unique Approach
- Blue Sky operates with full transparency, making its user data publicly available, which removes the traditional 'secret sauce' that advertisers often pay for, thereby changing the dynamics of the advertising industry.
- Graber, a spokesperson for Blue Sky, criticizes the current state of social media advertising as overly extractive, suggesting that Blue Sky's model offers a more ethical and sustainable alternative for engaging audiences without exploiting their data.