Bluesky's new CEO, Tony Schneider, discusses the company's dual identity as both a social media app and a protocol-driven ecosystem called the Atmosphere. He outlines plans for decentralized governance, private communities, and an affiliate-based monetization model, emphasizing a long-term vision of open social networks that prioritize user ownership and interoperability over walled gardens.
Summarized by Podsumo
Bluesky's CEO Tony Schneider envisions a 10-year journey to build a billion-user protocol, prioritizing decentralized identity and community ownership over rapid monetization.
The company is shifting to a 'distributed moderation' model, where independent apps like BlackSky can enforce their own policies while benefiting from the shared protocol.
Schneider reveals plans for an affiliate-based monetization system that rewards developers for sending traffic to publishers, avoiding ad-centric business models.
Bluesky is extending the Atmosphere to support private communities and private data, addressing a top developer request and enabling use cases like group chats and membership-based spaces.
The company is actively divesting control of the protocol by handing over the identity directory to a Swiss nonprofit and the protocol spec to the IETF, ensuring long-term independence.
"The whole point of Bluesky was to demonstrate that this open protocol could scale and attract other builders, building lots of apps, lots of social experiences that all interoperate and connect with each other, which is what we believe the future of social media should look like."
"We 100% do not want to control the standard at Bluesky. We are actually very actively doing everything in our power to divest control of it."
"If you want the bluesky, the consumer app to be the entry point to the diversity of the network, the app itself has to be diverse in a way that might dilute the app and make it lose its product market fit."