Jay Graeber, CEO of SNS 'Bluesky', talks about 'Why we left Twitter' and 'The relationship between Bluesky and AT Protocol'

The SNS ' Bluesky ' originated as an internal project of the former Twitter, and at the time of writing, it is being developed by 'Bluesky PBC', which is independent of Twitter. Jay Graeber , CEO of Bluesky PBC, spoke to the foreign media The Verge about 'the reason for independence from Twitter' and 'the relationship between Bluesky and the AT Protocol '.

Federation is the future of social media, says Bluesky CEO Jay Graber - The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/25/24108872/bluesky-ceo-graber-federation-social-media-decoder-interview

◆How Bluesky became independent from Twitter
Bluesky originated from an 'internal project to develop a decentralized social networking protocol' launched by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey in 2019. Although Graeber was not a Twitter employee, he had experience developing his own decentralized social networking protocol and participated in the project from outside Twitter as a 'person with knowledge of decentralized social networking protocols.'

The project team was called 'Bluesky' within the company, and was an open, crowdsourced experimental project, similar to Birdwatch , which was later officially implemented as a community note within Twitter. Bluesky was progressing smoothly, as it was a project launched by Dorsey, who was the CEO of Twitter at the time, but Graeber felt there was a risk that 'if someone other than Dorsey became CEO, the Bluesky project would disappear.' Feeling a sense of crisis about this 'risk caused by a centralized system,' Graeber called on people within Twitter to spin off the Bluesky project.

Negotiations for the spin-off lasted about six months, and at the end of 2021, a company called Bluesky PBLLC was formed, independent of Twitter. Around the same time, Dorsey resigned as CEO of Twitter and Parag Agrawal became CEO . A year later, Elon Musk acquired Twitter and became CEO . Graeber said, 'Bluesky could continue to move forward as a separate company from Twitter. If it had remained within Twitter, the project would no longer exist.'

The 'PBLLC' in Bluesky PBLLC stands for 'Public Benefit Limited Liability Company,' which literally translates to 'public interest limited liability company.' According to Graeber, Bluesky PBLLC does not pursue profits to distribute money to shareholders, but instead invests resources to achieve its mission of 'developing an open, decentralized SNS protocol.' However, this does not mean that profits are prohibited. The process by which the Bluesky project became independent from Twitter and the owner of Bluesky PBLLC are also summarized in detail in the following article. In addition, Bluesky PBLLC changed its business model to Bluesky PBC (public interest corporation) in July 2023.

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◆ Relationship between Bluesky and AT Protocol
Bluesky PBLLC released the initial test version of the decentralized SNS protocol 'Authenticated Data eXperiment (ADX)' in May 2022. This ADX was renamed 'AT Protocol' in October 2022. In addition, the SNS 'Bluesky' was also announced at the same time as a reference implementation of the AT Protocol. Originally, Bluesky PBLLC positioned the protocol itself as its main product, and expected that SNSs adopting the protocol would be developed by users. However, Bluesky PBLLC changed its policy and decided to develop Bluesky to show 'what kind of services can be created with AT Protocol'.

A decentralized social networking protocol development group launched by Twitter founder announces new social networking site 'Bluesky' - GIGAZINE

The AT Protocol is called 'AtProtocol' or 'AtProto' within the development team. The name AT Protocol is also an abbreviation for 'Authenticated transfer protocol.' Mr. Graeber also explains that it includes the symbolic icon '@' of the concept that 'if an app or service uses this protocol, users of different apps or services can interact with each other just by sending a reply with '@'.

◆I'm going to meet the developer of Bluesky, is there anything you'd like me to ask you?
I'm planning to meet the Bluesky developer around April, so I'd like to ask him what you want to ask him. Please leave a comment in the post below, such as 'I want to know about XX' or 'Ask me about XX!'

We are also accepting questions on the official GIGAZINE Discord server .

• Discord | 'I'm going to meet the developer of Bluesky, is there anything you want me to ask you?' | GIGAZINE
https://discord.com/channels/1037961069903216680/1222478560678121482