CEO Tony Schneider categorizes decisions by reversibility. Protocol-level changes are treated as long-term, irreversible commitments, while app-level features are seen as reversible experiments that can be launched and changed quickly. This dual-speed approach balances stability with agility.
Instead of traditional ads, Bluesky aims to generate revenue by enabling commerce across the entire AT Protocol ecosystem. They plan to take a small percentage of transactions they help facilitate, such as subscriptions, creating a model where they only succeed if the whole network thrives.
Bluesky treats content moderation as an open-protocol feature. Any group can create and publish content labels, and other apps or users can subscribe to these lists. This creates a decentralized and customizable approach to trust and safety that avoids a single central authority.
To ensure the AT Protocol remains open, Bluesky is handing over critical components to independent bodies. The core identity directory is moving to a Swiss nonprofit, and the protocol specification is being submitted to the IETF. This preemptively removes Bluesky as a single point of control or failure.
CEO Tony Schneider frames the popular Bluesky app not as the core product, but as an "on-ramp or maybe a lobby" for the underlying AT Protocol. Its primary strategic function is to attract a critical mass of users to solve the cold-start problem for third-party developers, making the entire ecosystem viable.
The next major evolution for the public-by-default AT Protocol is adding support for private data, enabling private groups. CEO Tony Schneider sees this as the number one request from developers and the key to unlocking "10 or a 100 X the number of use cases," moving beyond the public square model.
Bluesky's CEO views AT Protocol and ActivityPub as coexisting standards for different use cases. ActivityPub is designed around federating servers (e.g., a community's Mastodon instance). In contrast, AT Protocol is designed around user-centric data portability, federating millions of individual identities.
Bluesky's strategy for protocol evolution is to observe and then productize user workarounds. For example, they saw users creating communities with custom feeds. This user-driven demand validated the need for dedicated community features, making the investment in private data a low-risk, high-conviction bet.
Bluesky's leadership change was driven by founder Jay Graber's desire to refocus on her strengths. As the company scaled, she felt pulled away from vision and innovation. She initiated the CEO search and created the Chief Innovation Officer role for herself to lead new initiatives like integrating AI.