Surprise management change at Bluesky: CEO Jay Graber is leaving

Bluesky, which has attracted attention in recent years with its decentralized social media approach, is experiencing a management change. Jay Graber, who has served as the CEO of the company since 2021, announced that he will leave his position after approximately five years of leadership. Graber will assume the role of “Innovation Director” within the company in the future. The management of the company will be temporarily transferred to Toni Schneider, one of Bluesky investors and consultants. It is stated that Schneider will manage the company until the board of directors determines a permanent CEO.

Graber drew attention to the point the company has reached in his blog post. Emphasizing that the platform has entered a growth process, Graber stated that an experienced manager who can focus on operational scaling and corporate execution is required at this stage. Despite this, he stated that he will focus more on developing new product ideas and working on technological innovations. In this context, it was reported that he will continue to contribute to the technical development of the platform by returning to his innovation-oriented duty.

Bluesky started out as Jack Dorsey’s side project.

Jay Graber’s relationship with Bluesky dates back to a time when the platform was not yet an independent company. Bluesky first emerged as a side project started by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. The aim was to develop an open protocol that would enable social networks to operate in a decentralized structure. The project later became a separate company and Graber was appointed CEO in 2021.

The company completely terminated its corporate ties with Twitter in 2022. On the other hand, Jack Dorsey left the Bluesky management in 2024 and cut his ties with the project and turned to different social network initiatives. In this process, Bluesky became one of the prominent names among alternative social media platforms, especially during the period when Twitter was restructured. The platform initially worked with an invitation system, but over time it was opened to all users.

Bluesky has reached approximately 43 million users today. Although it lags behind Meta’s Threads platform, it has a strong user base, especially among the tech community, journalists and open internet advocates. In addition, Bluesky has achieved a different position in the industry by developing the infrastructure called AT Protocol, which supports the decentralized social media approach.

Despite the growth of the platform, one of the issues that attracted attention was the revenue model. To date, Bluesky has not offered a comprehensive monetization system. However, the company had previously announced that it was working on a premium subscription-based service. It is not yet clear how this system will affect the user experience and what financial model it will provide to the platform.

In his new role, Jay Graber is expected to continue to influence the company’s product vision. Since he is currently on the Bluesky board of directors, he will also have a say in the process of determining the permanent CEO. Toni Schneider, who took over as interim CEO, is known as an experienced technology executive who previously served as CEO of Automattic, the umbrella company of WordPress.com.

In his message published on Bluesky, Schneider stated that he strongly believes in the open social web approach developed by the team.