Jay Graber is stepping down as head of Bluesky, the social media platform solely introduced to WIRED. Enterprise capitalist Toni Schneider would be the interim CEO till a everlasting alternative is discovered.
“As Bluesky matures, the corporate wants a seasoned operator centered on scaling and execution, whereas I return to what I do finest: constructing new issues,” Graber wrote in a assertion concerning the personnel change.
Graber joined Bluesky in 2019, when it was a analysis challenge inside Twitter centered on creating a decentralized framework for the social internet. She turned the corporate’s first chief govt officer in 2021, when it spun out into an impartial entity. She oversaw the platform’s outstanding rise and the rising pains it skilled because it remodeled from a unusual Twitter offshoot to a full-fledged various to X.
Schneider tells WIRED that he intends to assist Bluesky “change into not simply the most effective open social app, however the basis for a complete new technology of user-owned networks.”
Schneider, who will proceed working as a companion on the enterprise capital agency True Ventures whereas at Bluesky, was beforehand CEO of the WordPress dad or mum firm, Automattic, from 2006 to 2014. He additionally served as its CEO once more in 2024 whereas high govt Matt Mullenweg went on a sabbatical. Throughout that point, Schneider met Graber and have become an adviser to Bluesky’s management. In a weblog submit asserting his new function, Schneider stated he plans to emphasise scaling, describing his job as “to assist arrange Bluesky’s subsequent section of progress.”
This isn’t the tip for Graber and Bluesky. She’s going to transition to change into the corporate’s chief innovation officer, a task centered on Bluesky’s know-how stack slightly than its enterprise operations. The place was created for her. Graber, who started her profession as a software program engineer, has at all times sounded essentially the most enthusiastic when discussing Bluesky’s know-how slightly than its income streams.
Bluesky’s board of administrators will appoint the subsequent everlasting CEO. The members embrace Jabber founder Jeremie Miller, crypto-focused VC Kinjal Shah, TechDirt founder Mike Masnick, and Graber. (Twitter founder Jack Dorsey was initially a part of the board however give up in 2024.) This implies Graber could have enter on her successor. The expertise search continues to be in early phases.
It’s a pivotal second for Bluesky. The corporate discovered success by positioning itself as a progressive alternative for Elon Musk’s X. That helped gas the platform’s rise as X’s hard-right ideological flip prompted some customers to hunt new social networks. In 2025, Bluesky grew from 25 million customers to over 40 million, in line with its annual Transparency Report. Its staff is optimistic it could possibly proceed increasing whereas staying true to its roots. Masnick says Schneider’s tenure at Automattic “proves you construct an actual enterprise round open software program.”
So far as social platforms go, although, it’s nonetheless a distinct segment providing, and one perpetually topic to pundit-class grumblings about the way it’s too woke or not woke sufficient. (Simply final week, in a dialog with WIRED, Dorsey stated he wasn’t proud of the platform due to “ideology.”) Meta’s competing app, Threads, has roughly 400 million customers, or roughly 10 instances extra lively accounts than Bluesky. Even when it’s not focused on chasing the kind of hockey-stick progress historically favored in Silicon Valley, the corporate does have to persuade extra individuals and establishments to make use of its platform if it needs to stake a declare to the function of digital commons.
