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Jay Graber is stepping down as head of Bluesky, the social media platform exclusively announced to WIRED. Venture capitalist Toni Schneider will be the interim CEO until a permanent replacement is found.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs Bluesky matures, the company needs a seasoned operator focused on scaling and execution, while I return to what I do best: building new things,\u201d Graber wrote in a statement about the personnel change.<\/p>\n
Graber joined Bluesky in 2019, when it was a research project within Twitter focused on developing a decentralized framework for the social web. She became the company\u2019s first chief executive officer in 2021, when it spun out into an independent entity. She oversaw the platform\u2019s remarkable rise and the growing pains it experienced as it transformed from a quirky Twitter offshoot to a full-fledged alternative to X.<\/p>\n
Schneider tells WIRED that he intends to help Bluesky \u201cbecome not just the best open social app, but the foundation for a whole new generation of user-owned networks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schneider, who will continue working as a partner at the venture capital firm True Ventures while at Bluesky, was previously CEO of the WordPress parent company, Automattic, from 2006 to 2014. He also served as its CEO again in 2024 while top executive Matt Mullenweg went on a sabbatical. During that time, Schneider met Graber and became an adviser to Bluesky\u2019s leadership. In a blog post announcing his new role, Schneider said he plans to emphasize scaling, describing his job as \u201cto help set up Bluesky's next phase of growth.\u201d<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t the end for Graber and Bluesky. She will transition to become the company\u2019s chief innovation officer, a role focused on Bluesky\u2019s technology stack rather than its business operations. The position was created for her. Graber, who began her career as a software engineer, has always sounded the most enthusiastic when discussing Bluesky\u2019s technology rather than its revenue streams.<\/p>\n
Bluesky\u2019s board of directors will appoint the next permanent CEO. The members include Jabber founder Jeremie Miller, crypto-focused VC Kinjal Shah, TechDirt founder Mike Masnick, and Graber. (Twitter founder Jack Dorsey was originally part of the board but quit in 2024.) This means Graber will have input on her successor. The talent search is still in early stages.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a pivotal moment for Bluesky. The company found success by positioning itself as a progressive replacement for Elon Musk\u2019s X. That helped fuel the platform\u2019s rise as X\u2019s hard-right ideological turn prompted some users to seek new social networks. In 2025, Bluesky grew from 25 million users to over 40 million, according to its annual Transparency Report. Its team is optimistic it can continue expanding while staying true to its roots. Masnick says Schneider\u2019s tenure at Automattic \u201cproves you build a real business around open software.\u201d<\/p>\n
As far as social platforms go, though, it\u2019s still a niche offering, and one perpetually subject to pundit-class grumblings about how it\u2019s too woke or not woke enough. (Just last week, in a conversation with WIRED, Dorsey said he wasn\u2019t happy with the platform because of \u201cideology.\u201d) Meta\u2019s competing app, Threads, has roughly 400 million users, or approximately 10 times more active accounts than Bluesky. Even if it\u2019s not interested in chasing the type of hockey-stick growth traditionally favored in Silicon Valley, the company does need to convince more people and institutions to use its platform if it wants to stake a claim to the role of digital commons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story Jay Graber is stepping down as head of Bluesky, the social media platform exclusively announced to WIRED. Venture capitalist Toni Schneider will be the interim CEO until a permanent replacement is found. \u201cAs Bluesky matures, the company needs a seasoned operator focused on scaling and execution, while I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47224,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-47223","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}