Bluesky Appoints Tony Schneider as Permanent CEO

Open-source and decentralized social media platform Bluesky has officially appointed Tony Schneider as its permanent Chief Executive Officer after serving as interim CEO for the past four months. Schneider, a longtime advisor and investor in the company, stepped into the interim role in March following the departure of former CEO Jay Graber.

Announcing his appointment, Schneider wrote in a post, "I took on this role because I believe in our core mission—to build open, decentralized public communication technology and bring it to people at scale. It is a tremendous honor to help advance this mission and be part of the movement toward an open social web."

Schneider is best known as the founding CEO of Automattic, the company behind the popular content management platform WordPress. When Jay Graber stepped down after leading Bluesky since 2021, she said the company's growing scale required an experienced operator who could guide its next phase of development, allowing her to return to what she enjoys most—building new products. Graber described Schneider as "the experienced operator and visionary leader" the company needed. She now serves as Bluesky's Chief Innovation Officer.

In his post, Schneider also outlined the platform's future direction, saying, "We're only at the beginning of this story. Our next major step will be bringing smaller personal spaces and more private communities or groups into the platform's Atmosphere. I believe this will drive Bluesky's next wave of growth and innovation."

Last June, Bluesky announced plans to introduce Reddit-style community features later this year, enabling users to create topic-based groups centered around shared interests and discussions.

//DBTech/BMT/OR//