Sounds like a firing / soft firing / come to jesus moment about the viability of the business...
Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down
11–20 of 421 posts
Re: Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down
#12Just to say the obvious: the new CEO is a VC partner and former CEO of Automattic. That seems very bad, no matter how "committed" they are to the vision of Bluesky.
He's only meant to be filling in temporarily per the Wired article, but we'll see.
Fair enough, I've never been involved in a CEO recruitment, I can't imagine the candidate pool tends to include people like the previous CEO of Bluesky
Re: Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down
#13Huh, I guess betting on Mastodon winning was the right bet.
Re: Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down
#14Just to say the obvious: the new CEO is a VC partner and former CEO of Automattic. That seems very bad, no matter how "committed" they are to the vision of Bluesky.
Apologies, I'm probably under a rock, but why is that bad? I see they're behind WordPress but am not sure what the 1:1 is. The WP Engine stuff?
Re: Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down
#15> and proved that a values-driven social network could thrive at scale. How could a social network, or anything humans create, not be values-driven?
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Re: Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down
#16Post from new CEO Toni Schneider https://toni.org/2026/03/09/coming-off-the-bench-for-bluesky...
There's only a single non-platitude in the entire letter, but luckily it provides us with a wealth of information about what's coming next:
> I’ve been a partner at True Ventures for many years
Re: Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down
#17Sounds like a firing / soft firing / come to jesus moment about the viability of the business...
Pretty much. It's fun seeing idealists get slapped by reality. If you want to protect your ideals you better know how to fight for them using the same tactics as your competitors.
Learning how to build a board that is in your favor, making alliances with less than pure players if needed, and being ruthlessly competitive allows an ideal to become reality.
Re: Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down
#18> and proved that a values-driven social network could thrive at scale. How could a social network, or anything humans create, not be values-driven?
Values aren't the only motivator, unless you take an extremely broad definition of values.
Yeah, the value of money is ironically usually not what we mean with ”values”.
Re: Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down
#19Wait Bluesky had a CEO? I thought it was some type of organic open source collective.
Re: Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down
#20I have no idea what to think of this. Especially the Automattic connection, the company with the petty tyrant running it. I would want anyone coming from there to have learned something from the failure of the WordPress Foundation since Bluesky will need some foundationing too.