Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down

Jay Graber is Step down as well Bluesky Chiefthe social media platform announced exclusively to WIRED. Venture capitalist Tony Schneider will be interim CEO until a permanent replacement is found.

“As Bluesky matures, the company needs an experienced operator focused on expansion and execution, while I return to what I do best: building new things,” Graber wrote in an article. statement About changing employees.

Graber joined Bluesky in 2019, when it was a research project within Twitter focused on developing a decentralized framework for the social media network. She became the company’s first CEO in 2021, when it transitioned into an independent entity. I oversaw the remarkable rise of the platform and Growing pains It has seen it transform from a weird offshoot of Twitter into a full-fledged replacement for X.

Schneider tells WIRED he intends to help Bluesky “become not only the best open social app, but also the foundation for a whole new generation of user-owned networks.”

Schneider, who will continue to serve as a partner at venture capital firm True Ventures while at Bluesky, previously served as CEO of WordPress’s parent company, Automattic, from 2006 to 2014. He also served as its CEO again in 2024 while CEO Matt Mullenweg went on leave. During that period, Schneider met Graeber and became an advisor to Bluesky’s leadership. In a Blog post In announcing his new role, Schneider said he plans to emphasize expansion, describing his job as “helping prepare the next phase of growth for Bluesky.”

This is not the end for Graber and Plosky. She will move on to become the company’s chief innovation officer, a role focused on Bluesky’s technology stack rather than its business operations. The position was created for her. Graber, who began her career as a software engineer, has always seemed more enthusiastic when discussing Bluesky’s technology rather than its revenue sources.

Bluesky’s Board of Directors will appoint the next permanent CEO. Members include Jabber founder Jeremy Miller, cryptocurrency-focused VC Kinjal Shah, TechDirt founder Mike Masnick, and Graber. (Twitter founder Jack Dorsey was originally part of the board but resigned in 2024.) This means Graber will have input on her successor. The talent search is still in its early stages.

It’s a pivotal moment for Ploski. The company achieved success by positioning itself as Gradual replacement As for Elon Musk’s In 2025, Bluesky grew from 25 million users to more than 40 million, according to its annual report Transparency report. Her team is optimistic that it can continue to expand while maintaining its roots. Schneider’s tenure at Automattic “proves that you’re building a real business around open software,” Masnick says.

As far as social platforms go, though, it’s still a niche offering, and a permanent one Subject to the complaints of critics About how he’s too awake or not awake enough. (Just last week, in… conversation (With WIRED, Dorsey said he wasn’t happy with the platform because of “ideology.”) A competing Meta app, Threads, has approx. 400 million usersor nearly 10 times more active accounts than Bluesky. Even if it’s not interested in chasing the kind of growth traditionally favored by Silicon Valley, the company needs to convince more people and organizations to use its platform if it wants to claim the role of the digital commons.