Wired Senior Writer Katie Knibbs interviews Bluesky CEO Jay Graber about the burgeoning social platform and its future.
Director: Justin Wolfson
Director of Photography: Mark Simon
Editor: Richard Trammell; Louis Lalire
Host: Kate Knibbs
Guest: Jay Graber
Line Producer: Jamie Rasmussen
Associate Producer: Brandon White
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark
Camera Operator: Howard Shack
Sound Mixer: Jim Sander
Production Assistant: Dexter Shack
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Stella Shortino
Supervising Editor: Erica DeLeo
Assistant Editor: Fynn Lithgow
Director: Justin Wolfson
Director of Photography: Mark Simon
Editor: Richard Trammell; Louis Lalire
Host: Kate Knibbs
Guest: Jay Graber
Line Producer: Jamie Rasmussen
Associate Producer: Brandon White
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark
Camera Operator: Howard Shack
Sound Mixer: Jim Sander
Production Assistant: Dexter Shack
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Stella Shortino
Supervising Editor: Erica DeLeo
Assistant Editor: Fynn Lithgow
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00Blue Sky is for everyone when we think that over time the broader public
00:03conversation needs to be on an open protocol, which is what we're built on.
00:06I'm Wired senior writer Kate Nibbs. Today I sat down with Blue Sky CEO Jay Graeber.
00:11We discuss how influencers are joining the platform, Blue Sky's relationship
00:15with news media, and whether she would welcome President Trump to Blue Sky.
00:19This is The Big Interview.
00:26Jay, thank you so much for joining me today.
00:28Thank you, thanks for having me.
00:30So last time we talked in December, I believe Blue Sky had just surpassed 24-25 million users.
00:37Where are you today?
00:3834.6 million users.
00:40What milestones are you hoping to hit by the end of 2025?
00:44There's a lot of new features that we're launching and we're excited to expand a lot.
00:48I think getting in some of the things we've been talking about for a long time, like communities.
00:51What does that look like?
00:53Yeah, communities is a way that people are already using feeds.
00:56A lot of people don't realize that Blue Sky is a bit like Reddit and Twitter at the same
01:00time because you can build feeds that are essentially communities.
01:03Like the science feed is run by scientists, moderated by scientists, and has its own rules.
01:08And so this is something that you can do, but you have to go outside the app to do it right
01:11now.
01:12And so we've talked to people who are running these feeds and they would like better tooling
01:15for making these into communities in the app.
01:17And so that's the big idea, which is essentially just making it easier to create and run a custom
01:22feed, which is an interface you can install into the app.
01:24That's like your own timeline and run that like a community of your own.
01:27When you say you have to go outside of the app, what does that mean?
01:30There's third party services that have built feed builders, services like Skyfeeds or Graze.
01:35They let you create feeds without knowing how to code.
01:37And you can say, I want this list of people to contribute to my feed.
01:41You can post into it with this hashtag or this emoji, and then you run it essentially
01:45like it's a service that you're providing other people.
01:47Other people can install it, subscribe to it, pin it to the homepage of their app.
01:52Any timeline for when this is coming?
01:53Well, you asked about the end of the year, so I think that's the most concrete timeline
01:57we can give at the moment.
01:58And I know that you recently rolled out video as a feature, which we're very excited about.
02:02I think a lot of people already conceptualize Blue Sky as sort of a ex-competitor, but now
02:07are you gunning for TikTok too?
02:09We are, as you know, built on an open protocol.
02:12And so other apps are starting to fill in these open spaces.
02:16There is an app called Skylight that has just gotten 150,000 users.
02:20And this is more of a straight TikTok alternative.
02:23It lets you post short form videos, you know, edit them in app, create them.
02:27There's these other apps springing up now on the same protocol, like Skylight, like flashes
02:32for photos that do different things.
02:34And the great thing about this being an open protocol means that you can move from blue
02:39sky over to Skylight social and keep your followers.
02:42So they go with you across these applications.
02:44So when you say they go with me, if I'm going to port my followers over or even just join
02:49these new apps, how would I do that?
02:51Like, do I actually go into the app store and download something new or how does it work?
02:54Yeah.
02:55You download Skylight from the app store and then you log in with your blue sky username.
03:01If you want to link them together.
03:02If you don't want to link them, you can create a new account.
03:04But if you link them, you have the same number of followers and the photos or videos that
03:07you post to Skylight will also show up in blue sky or vice versa.
03:11And like over time, the apps can decide, is everything going to, you know, be shared across
03:16or is there going to be some stuff that's separate?
03:18But right now it's sort of just a shared data layer where you can have people seeing your
03:23videos on blue sky, even if they're posted on Skylight.
03:26And so does the blue sky team have anything to do with the development of Skylight or is it
03:29totally separate?
03:30It's totally separate.
03:31Do you know, know who developed it at all?
03:33Like what are your relationships like with the people who are developing different apps
03:37on the protocol?
03:38There was recently a conference called the Atmosphere conference.
03:41We call the Atmosphere the broader ecosystem of applications around the app protocol, which
03:46is the layer blue sky is built on.
03:48And we met a lot of folks there who are building even apps we didn't know were being built.
03:52So there's private messengers being built, new forms of moderation tools.
03:56There's a lot of ones out there that are innovating on new forms of social built on this shared
04:00layer because they can immediately tap into the blue sky user base and just add features
04:05on rather than having to start from zero.
04:07So that's the benefit to developers of building an open ecosystem.
04:09You don't have to start from zero each time.
04:11You start over and now you have 34.6 million users to tap into.
04:15So I know there's blue sky, the app, and then it's built on this app protocol.
04:19And that's how all of these people are developing these new cool video and photo apps and everything.
04:24So the teams are separate.
04:26As the CEO of blue sky, like if one of the video apps were to go mega viral and surpass
04:32blue sky wildly, et cetera, would that help you or would it just sort of be a wash for
04:38you?
04:39It would help us because these are a shared back ends, if you recall.
04:42So that means that all those videos would be being able to be viewed on blue sky too.
04:46It probably changed the way that people could interact over on blue sky because all this content
04:50would be coming in from another application, just like all the content created on blue sky
04:55can be borrowed over there.
04:56We can borrow from the other apps as well.
04:58And then it means that, you know, if they're building on our services over time, one of
05:02the pathways to monetization we've mentioned is developer services.
05:05So building out infrastructure for new apps to get started, sort of like a fire base for
05:10social, if you will, where you get new apps off the ground and then, you know, provide
05:13infrastructure to them.
05:14So I've noticed that there has been sort of an influx of big creators onto blue sky, but right
05:20now there's no direct way for creators to monetize their work on blue sky in the way that there
05:24is on say YouTube.
05:26Are you working on ways to change that?
05:28Yeah.
05:29One thing that we've seen is that we're not giving creators money, but we're giving them
05:32really great traffic and that can convert to money because if you're a YouTube creator
05:36or you have a Patreon and you're posting your Patreon link, one big thing is we don't
05:41downrank links.
05:42And so you're getting higher link traffic on blue sky, even with a smaller follower count.
05:46This is true of small creators and even news organizations have been reporting
05:50this difference in engagement and click through numbers.
05:52We've heard from large news organizations that blue sky is giving better click throughs and
05:57better subscription rates.
05:58And so this converts to money once you get people onto your site.
06:01So I think this is one of the big benefits we're leaning into right now is just giving
06:04people that direct traffic, that direct relationship with their audience and giving them the ability
06:09to monetize however they want.
06:11Down the road, we might introduce other mechanisms, but right now it's just about being the best platform
06:15to serve creators' needs in terms of giving them attention, giving them engagement and
06:20giving them the ability to move with their followers.
06:22Right?
06:23So as I mentioned before, if you're a video creator and you do some content on blue sky to build
06:28up a following and then you download skylight and you start posting different kinds of content
06:33over there, you can have that follow graph just go with you and start building on it.
06:37So it's cumulative rather than also as a creator starting from scratch each app you move to.
06:41I love that.
06:42As someone who's jumped from app to app in the past, that sounds very helpful.
06:46And when you were talking about traffic for traditional news organizations, I know that
06:51traditionally the news media and social media have had sort of an antagonistic relationship.
06:57Like it's been obviously a huge driver of traffic for news outlets, but then they're sort of beholden
07:03to people like Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk and what they want to do to the news.
07:07Do you have a broader vision for how you want blue sky to interact with the information ecosystem
07:13or the news media?
07:14Yeah.
07:15We want to create a more direct relationship again and be the place where we make those
07:21relationships happen.
07:22And so rather than being the single feed that all user attention passes through, where small
07:27algorithm changes can affect how much traffic a news organization is getting, we want to give
07:31direct traffic to news orgs and even let them do things like build their own feeds or link
07:36their domain directly as their username.
07:38Clicking that just clicks you directly through to your site.
07:40You can also right now create verified news feeds.
07:43Some people have been building these in the community.
07:45And so users can just scroll through all the news articles being posted.
07:49This means that you're getting direct traffic because you're not depending on the algorithm,
07:52which might be at any given moment showing more or less news to a given user.
07:56If the users are interested, they can just subscribe to a news feed and see all the articles
08:01being published on blue sky in one place.
08:03So recently there's been a pretty noticeable influx of bigger name celebrities on the
08:09app, including some of the biggest names in democratic politics, like Barack Obama and
08:14Hillary Clinton just joined, for instance.
08:16Are you doing anything to court the celebrities or really famous influencers?
08:21We're doing some community outreach.
08:23We've had a very community driven growth strategy.
08:26And so we're seeing a lot of growth in sectors with maybe not as big celebrities, but a lot
08:31of traction in areas like, you know, sports media, for example.
08:34Meena Kimes, a sports reporter, came on and she created a starter pack, which got a lot
08:39of follows very quickly.
08:40Because when you create starter packs, which are essentially lists of accounts that bundle
08:44together everyone in a given field, when new people come on through that link, they're
08:47following all of them at once.
08:49So that's been a way that communities have been onboarding outside of, you know, politics or like
08:53even large celebrities, we have game devs, we have sports, we have science.
08:57Lots of these different interests are kind of starting with people building custom starter
09:01packs and then bringing on folks directly into their community.
09:04Some of these bigger name people who are joining, you know, they do tend to be liberal politicians
09:10when they're politicians.
09:11I'm wondering, would you welcome President Trump if he was debating joining Blue Sky?
09:17Yeah, Blue Sky's for everyone, you know.
09:19And we think that over time, the broader public conversation needs to be on an open protocol,
09:24which is what we're built on.
09:26Because that lets people choose their own moderation preferences, it lets people choose their own
09:30feed preferences.
09:31And things can evolve without it being a binary choice, which is like everyone has to adhere
09:35to this set of moderation rules with that one.
09:37You can have customization both within the app and outside of it.
09:40Right now, you know, it's people who feel that there's more direct benefits to being on
09:44here if you're a creator or somebody who wants to have a direct relationship with your audience.
09:48But over time, the benefit of this protocol based approach, I think will extend to all
09:52sorts of social media users.
09:53So right now we're in this moment where free speech is under threat and free speech on
10:00the internet is under threat.
10:01I'm wondering how you envision Blue Sky's relationship to speech, including political speech, and what
10:08your obligations are to your users and I guess to the internet at large.
10:12I think building on an open protocol like we've done is the most enduring foundation
10:17for speech.
10:18Because what we're doing is creating a digital commons of user data where you really get
10:24to control your own identity and your data.
10:26And then we're building infrastructure that I hope stays around for a really long time.
10:30Because Blue Sky, the app, is just one site where speech can happen.
10:33And all these other apps are showing that you can have an ecosystem of a lot of different
10:38applications.
10:39This is like the web itself.
10:41Early on we had AOL and accessing the internet happened through AOL.
10:44And if the AOL web portal wasn't showing you something, it would be a lot harder to find.
10:49And then more unopinionated browsers came along.
10:51And these just linked you out to the broader internet.
10:54And now anyone can put up a blog and host their own views online.
10:57And then there's larger websites if you want to be on Substack or Medium.
11:01But you can either self-host or choose one of these.
11:03This is the kind of ecosystem we're building.
11:05Everyone can self-host.
11:06And then the question of freedom of speech, not reach, is made very tangible.
11:11Because then the sites like the sort of mediums of the world that host a lot of blogs get
11:15to choose their moderation rules.
11:17But if individuals are unhappy with that, they can start a new site or host their own blog.
11:21For people who might not be familiar with the phrase freedom of speech, not freedom of
11:25reach, could you explain it?
11:26Yeah, this was a principle that old Twitter talked about early on.
11:31And when we were spinning out of Twitter, I never worked for Twitter, but we opened up
11:34this new design space around Blue Sky, which was how do we embed that into a protocol layer?
11:40So the freedom of speech is embedded in the protocol.
11:43Anyone can do the equivalent of standing up a new blog.
11:46And then the sites like Blue Sky, which are the applications, get to decide, you know,
11:50how are we going to prioritize reach?
11:52You know, we do have a default algorithm, but you can choose any other algorithm you want.
11:56And so we don't necessarily show everything in the algorithm or the default service.
12:01But if you want to find something elsewhere, you can go elsewhere in the ecosystem to find
12:05it.
12:06That means that you have the pathways that the apps are deciding what is going to be most
12:09accessible.
12:10And then if you want to change the rules, you can build another thing.
12:13And that's guarantee of freedom of speech is being always able to build your own thing
12:17or find your own space that serves you the most.
12:19So as you're scaling up, I know that you hired additional moderators to tackle some of the
12:24necessary moderation challenges like CSAM.
12:27How challenging is it as you're scaling up to sort of balance offering this level of customization
12:35with just the sort of basic things you need to do as a social network for everyone, like,
12:40you know, keep pornography off, for example?
12:42Yeah, I mean, we're running a foundational moderation service.
12:46So we get to choose the rules within the Blue Sky app.
12:50And like I said, you can fork off, do your own thing.
12:52But within the parameters of Blue Sky, we're setting what the rules are.
12:56And so we employ a moderation team to do this.
13:00We face some of the same challenges as centralized social apps, because to run a centralized moderation
13:04team, you're doing a lot of the same kinds of work.
13:06And so I would say it's very similar at the base layer.
13:10And then we have this extra options that we've layered on top for users to choose their own
13:15spaces.
13:16And in some cases, that means that users are able to resolve things more locally.
13:20So for example, within the feeds that run a bit like communities, you can moderate things,
13:24resolve things locally.
13:26But still, it's a broader Blue Sky application, has its own set of rules.
13:29How many countries are you operating in right now, or do you have users everywhere?
13:34We have a lot of users in different countries.
13:35Some of the biggest are the US, of course, Japan, Brazil, and various countries in the EU.
13:42Are there unique challenges in certain locations?
13:45And if so, what are they?
13:46Each place has their own regulatory guidelines.
13:49And we try to be in compliance, and that's part of being a global company, is just learning
13:54to operate in different places.
13:55I think over the long run, there will be applications just like Skylight is targeted towards video.
14:01Maybe there's applications targeted towards different markets.
14:04Early on, we saw several Japanese users build Japan-focused applications.
14:08Before we had gotten internationalization into the app, so different languages depending
14:12on where you're based, people built their own apps to do that.
14:15So that's an example of how you can customize things to your own local market.
14:18Speaking of local markets, we're in Seattle, which is where you're based.
14:22But is Blue Sky currently a remote forward workspace?
14:26How are you guys set up?
14:27We're a fully remote team, and part of the reason for this is we wanted to hire people
14:30who care deeply about the mission and are really aligned in what we're doing.
14:34Have some of the experience in social, have experience in open protocols, and that combination
14:38is rare and hard to find.
14:40So if we tried to hire all in one city, we wouldn't be getting the best people out there.
14:44But as it is, we've hired from several different countries all over the United States because
14:48there's people all over that are interested in the vision of what we're building.
14:51And what brought you to Seattle originally?
14:53I moved here during the pandemic.
14:55I was previously in San Francisco, and it's a really nice city.
14:58I mean, the nature, the water, the mountains.
15:01It's a place where nature is really accessible, and I really like that.
15:03And I understand that you have a background in crypto.
15:06I know that the largest investor in Blue Sky is a venture capital firm that sort of specializes
15:12in crypto investing.
15:14Does Blue Sky have more in common with a crypto startup than one might originally suspect?
15:19Well, the term Web3 got very associated with cryptocurrency.
15:24So it's not a good word to use for what we're doing anymore because there isn't a blockchain
15:28or a cryptocurrency involved.
15:30But if you want to think about Web3 as evolving the social Web2 version forward, that kind of
15:35is what we're doing.
15:37We're evolving forward social media that was based in centralized companies into something
15:42that is open and distributed.
15:44And that was some of the goals underlying the Web3 movement that had a lot of blockchains
15:48involved.
15:49We just didn't build on that technical foundation of a blockchain because we didn't need it.
15:53You can achieve a lot of the same things using open web principles and more Web 1.0 kinds
15:58of technology, which is, for example, our identity system lets you use a domain name as your username.
16:04So you can be like wired.com as your username.
16:06That's just a Web 1.0 technology brought into a social media sphere.
16:11And so I think our investors really saw that vision.
16:13And they're also excited about building out the broader Dev ecosystem, which is something
16:17we really wanted alignment on.
16:19We want investors who care about seeing this entire world of social media come to life,
16:24not just one application, blue sky, succeeding.
16:26Yeah.
16:27What would building out the Dev ecosystem look like?
16:29It's starting to happen.
16:30So the atmosphere conference, which I mentioned, was started and run by the community.
16:34We heard about it partway through and sponsored it, but they found other sponsors as well.
16:38And it's something that's taking off sort of as a movement of people to reclaim social.
16:43And blue sky and the open protocol is a great place to do a lot of this building.
16:47People are getting in and starting to build different applications, starting to propose new
16:51ways the protocol could be evolved.
16:53Private data, for example, is not something that we have in blue sky at the moment as part
16:56of the protocol.
16:57But people are proposing new ways to do private data for their applications that they're building.
17:01And so moving forward, the app protocol, I don't think all the development will just
17:05be within the blue sky company.
17:06It will be other people building their own applications and then modifying the protocol
17:11and suggesting changes that meet the needs of what they're trying to do.
17:14And when you say the blue sky company, would you be the CEO of all of this or just the
17:19platform?
17:20I am just the CEO of blue sky social.
17:22So we have built out the app protocol and we maintain the blue sky application.
17:26So we'll always maintain the blue sky app.
17:28But the app protocol is going to take on a life of its own.
17:31Pieces of it are going to be standardized.
17:33Pieces of it are going to be stewarded by the community.
17:35And it's going to evolve in different directions as the new people who are getting involved
17:38shape it.
17:39Right now you do have some investor money.
17:41Is your stance on advertising still the same?
17:44Where are you with subscriptions?
17:45Basically, this is me asking you, how are you planning to make money?
17:49Yeah, subscriptions are actually coming soon as well.
17:51So that got delayed for a few months last year during our growth spurt, but we're re-approaching
17:55how we're going to do them.
17:57And I think the next steps down the road are also to look into what kind of marketplaces
18:02can we build that span some of these different applications.
18:05There's other apps in the ecosystem that are experimenting with, say, placing sponsored
18:09posts and feeds and things like that.
18:10I've mentioned before, I think ads eventually in some form work their way into an attention economy.
18:15But we're not going to do ads the way traditional social apps did because we don't have a single
18:19feed.
18:20And the traditional ad model is usually getting everyone to spend as much time engaged on a
18:26single feed as possible and then putting ads in there.
18:28Since we have lots of different feeds, even if we did that, you could switch away and use
18:32a different feed because this one has too many ads.
18:34And so it kind of constrains the open model of what we've done, constrains what we can do.
18:38We'll just let people experiment and see what comes out of it.
18:40Some people watching this video might not be super familiar with Blue Sky.
18:44What do you want people to know about this platform?
18:47I'd want them to know this is a choose your own adventure game.
18:50So you can get in there and customize the experience as much as you want.
18:53And if you're not finding what you want within the Blue Sky app, there might be another app
18:57out there that is still part of the Blue Sky at protocol ecosystem that will give you what
19:02you want.
19:03Like if it's, you know, videos or images or maybe a different kind of feed experience,
19:08like let's say the discover feed isn't giving you what you want.
19:11You can install a different one and find the stuff you want.
19:13And if you can't find it, you can build it.
19:15And so the options are really endless.
19:16I think it takes some time to get in there and really set things up the way that you like
19:20it.
19:21But then once you do, it's a great place to be because you don't get this level of
19:23control anywhere else.
19:24I mean, you've kind of sold me on becoming an app developer for this protocol.
19:29I might be making a career pivot soon.
19:30So thank you.
19:31Yeah, I think there's lots of technical folks who watch, you know, Wired interviews as well.
19:36And I would just love for them to know that this is an open field to build on.
19:39This is like early social era where you can build anything on fully open APIs.
19:43Well, thank you again for joining us.