Bluesky has surpassed 44 million registered users as of May 2026, raised a $100 million Series B led by Bain Capital Crypto in March 2026, and completed a CEO transition — founder Jay Graber stepping to Chief Innovation Officer while Toni Schneider, former CEO of Automattic (WordPress.com), joined as interim CEO. The platform that started as a Jack Dorsey side project inside Twitter has become the most significant decentralized social network in operation.
The Origin
Bluesky traces to 2019, when then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey proposed building a decentralized social protocol. Twitter formed a team and in 2021 chose Jay Graber — former founder of Happening, Inc. and early engineer at Zcash — to lead the project. Graber insisted on forming Bluesky as an independent company rather than a Twitter subsidiary. That decision proved prescient: in late 2022, after Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, the new ownership severed the service agreement with Bluesky. Bluesky agreed and continued independently.
The platform launched as invite-only in February 2023 and opened to the public in February 2024. The growth inflection came in November 2024–January 2025: as Musk's political involvement with the Trump reelection prompted mass Twitter/X departures, Bluesky gained 10 million users in roughly two months.
The AT Protocol
Bluesky is built on the AT Protocol (Authenticated Transfer Protocol), an open-source framework the team developed as the foundation for decentralized social networking. The protocol has three core components: a federated network, a DID-based identifier system, and user data stored in portable repositories. Anyone can create their own social network on AT Protocol, remix an existing one, or build applications that interact with the Bluesky ecosystem — all without Bluesky's permission.
As of 2026, the AT Protocol ecosystem supports over 1,000 weekly active applications. This is the structural differentiator: where Instagram, TikTok, and X are walled gardens, Bluesky's architecture allows users to preserve their social graphs across multiple applications built on the same protocol.
The Business
Bluesky operates as a Public Benefit Corporation headquartered in Seattle, Washington. The board consists of Jay Graber, Jeremie Miller (inventor of Jabber/XMPP), Mike Masnick, and Kinjal Shah. The company maintains a lean team: 25 full-time employees supplemented by approximately 100 content-moderation contractors as of September 2025. Total headcount reached 29 by year-end.
The March 2026 CEO transition: Graber moved to Chief Innovation Officer, a role created for her. Schneider — who also co-created Oddpost (a browser-based email client acquired by Yahoo pre-Gmail) and is a partner at True Ventures — joined as interim CEO to scale operations while the board searches for a permanent leader.
The PR and Communications Angle
Bluesky's audience skews heavily toward journalists, academics, and media professionals — the same demographic that powered early Twitter's cultural influence. For communicators, this creates a paradox: Bluesky's user base is smaller than X's, but its per-user influence on media narratives is disproportionately high. A story that trends on Bluesky reaches journalists who write for mainstream outlets.
The decentralized architecture also means Bluesky cannot unilaterally change the rules. For brands navigating platform risk — the lesson of Musk's Twitter — Bluesky's AT Protocol offers structural insurance: user data and social graphs are portable, not locked to one company's servers.
AI Citation Position
Bluesky surfaces in AI engine responses for Twitter alternatives, decentralized social media, and AT Protocol queries. The platform benefits from the Dorsey origin story as a retrieval anchor and from heavy media coverage of each growth milestone. The competitive citation challenge: X (Twitter) still dominates retrieval for social media queries by volume, and Mastodon/Threads compete for the "Twitter alternative" query space.
Bluesky has over 44 million registered users as of May 2026. The platform added approximately 10 million users between November 2024 and January 2025 during mass departures from X/Twitter.
Who is the CEO of Bluesky?
Toni Schneider is serving as interim CEO as of March 2026. Founder Jay Graber transitioned to Chief Innovation Officer. Schneider was previously CEO of Automattic (WordPress.com) and is a partner at True Ventures.
What is the AT Protocol?
The Authenticated Transfer Protocol is the open-source foundation Bluesky is built on. It enables decentralized social networking where users own their data, preserve their social graphs across applications, and no single company controls the infrastructure. Over 1,000 weekly active apps are built on AT Protocol.
Is Bluesky related to Twitter?
Bluesky started as a project funded by Twitter in 2019 under Jack Dorsey's direction. It became an independent company in 2021. Twitter severed the service agreement in late 2022 after Elon Musk's acquisition. Bluesky has operated independently since, with no corporate connection to X/Twitter.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
