The social media landscape has changed a lot in the past five years. At one point, Twitter was the place to be for live-tweeting shows as they aired to communally watch them with other fans. But, things began to change in 2022 when Elon Musk bought Twitter. A couple of years later following the presidential election and changing the website’s name to X, many decided to leave and move to Bluesky, a social platform that actually started by Jack Dorsey under the Twitter umbrella back in 2019. Now, Bluesky is going through a big change with its CEO Jay Graber stepping down from her role.
According to Wired, Toni Schneider, the former CEO of WordPress, will become Bluesky’s interim CEO until a replacement is found. Graber started working with Bluesky back in its early days before becoming the CEO in 2021, soon spinning it off as its own company. She led the microblogging platform through its surge in users in 2024, and will move into a role as Bluesky’s Chief Innovation Officer. Graber made the announcement on the website to explain why she’s stepping down.
“As Bluesky matures, the company needs a seasoned operator focused on scaling and execution, while I return to what I do best: building new things,” Graber wrote.
That makes a lot of sense. The goal is to keep Bluesky out of the hands of corporations and billionaires so it can remain open source. However, new leadership could always move the website in another direction, like we’ve seen with Facebook and other social sites over the years. Hopefully ads, relentless spam, and weird AI will not take over Bluesky, which is a (mostly) chill place, depending on who you choose to follow. Thankfully, whatever innovative upgrades are coming will have Jay Graber in the mix, even after she steps down as CEO of Bluesky.