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𝕕𝕚𝕒𝕟𝕖𝕒 🏳️‍⚧️🦋
𝕕𝕚𝕒𝕟𝕖𝕒 🏳️‍⚧️🦋 • diaspora
Изображение / Фото
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#twitter #elon #Bluesky
Shawn Andrew поделился этим.
Adam Hunt
Adam Hunt • diaspora
No, no more billionaire curated media for me!
You can note that there are no billionaires involved in Bluesky:
Right now Bluesky has no revenue stream. It was started with US$13 million in initial funding from Twitter. On 05 July 2023, the company had raised US$8 million in a seed funding round led by the Neo tech mentoring community. In October 2024 it announced US$15 million in "Series A" financing led by Blockchain Capital. The company pledged that it would not integrate cryptocurrency into the social app or the AT Protocol, so as to not "hyperfinancialize the social experience". So at present it is just running on that US$31 million in seed capital
Brad Koehn ☑️
Brad Koehn ☑️ • diaspora
Intro to seed capital.

Bluesky is in a precarious position. Being a seed capital funded based in the US, they’re vulnerable to acquisition by larger players if they too are successful (Musk or Zuck could buy them just to shut them down). Being in the capital funding space they’ve taken investment for equity and those investors will want an ROI if it’s at all possible.
Simons_Mith
Simons_Mith • diaspora
That's probably true, but even if Bluesky is shut down, I can't see anyone who tried it going back to Twitter. It's just too horrible there. Bluesky has reminded a lot of people who had forgotten what social media /can/ be like at its best.
Simons_Mith
Simons_Mith • diaspora
Also, the link-suppression behaviour Twitter has done for years is now very obvious. Some people are getting more than four times the engagement with a quarter the followers.
Adam Hunt
Adam Hunt • diaspora
Sure those points are quite true. Presently the company is not up for sale, though. Their CEO, Jay Graber, is young, keen and idealistic, but also an experienced software engineer, so it will be up to her to see how this develops over time. It may end up with a reasonable revenue model and thrive or not. From interviews and statements, I think she is very aware of what the challenges and threats are, but the users there are willing to give her and the board a chance and see if they can transition it to a sustainable model. The users are very anti-Musk and quite anti-Zuckerburg, too.

Wikipedia says:
Funding for operations, as of late 2024, comes primarily from investors and venture capital firms. No advertising is available on the service as of November 2024, and Jay Graber has stated that Bluesky will not "enshittify the network with ads".[101] The company is considering introducing an optional subscription service for users, as well as introducing user-to-user payment services.
Brad Koehn ☑️
Brad Koehn ☑️ • diaspora
The business has to make money somehow. That’s the point of making a business. And that’s the difference between a federated model like email (or Mastodon, or Diaspora) and a closed one. Email services are an expense every business pays for because it’s necessary to stay in business. A closed, privately-funded system like Bluesky cannot run that way; it has to make money (that’s the promise they made when they took angel funding in exchange for equity).

Bluesky’s options would seem to be:
* Remain a closed platform, which inevitably leads to enshittification (high risk, high return)
* Sell licenses to the technology (either the software or the protocol) (high risk, very low return)
* Hosting/SaaS for enterprise Bluesky servers (high risk, low return)

Venture capital and angel funders are only interested in one of those options.

Signal is a great example of how to do it right: they’re closed, but they’re a US nonprofit, which means they cannot become a for-profit enterprise. They’ve already opened their IP. That removes all the profit pressure (replacing it with funding pressure).

If Bluesky wants to remain idealistic and open, then they need to relieve themselves of the profit pressure.
Adam Hunt
Adam Hunt • diaspora
If Bluesky wants to remain idealistic and open, then they need to relieve themselves of the profit pressure.
I can't disagree with that concept.
Adam Hunt
Adam Hunt • diaspora
I am also not sold on the idea that an open protocol and federation is a good model, either.

The Fediverse is a good test case. Now in operation for almost 15 years, the network that includes Diaspora, Mastodon and several other projects has not been a big success. As of 30 November 2024 it had attracted at total of 3,903,555 users over its history and had 679,099 active users. That high user loss rate is probably accounted for by fact that "pods" are constantly closing. Because anyone can start a pod on the fediverse, people often do, then others join that pod, creating accounts there. Then the person running the pod runs out of money, interest or motivation and it closes, stranding the users. This even happened twice to Diaspora's flagship pod, joindiaspora.com, which remains closed. Sure the users can, in theory, save their data, but at present they can't import it into a new pod as the software does not allow that. They can also start a new account on a new pod and start over and some will do that, but many just give up in frustration.

These experiences are not a ringing endorsement of the federated social media model. The fact that after 15 years the fedeverse as a whole has 2% of the number of active users that Bluesky has attracted in nine months says a lot of the acceptance of the federated model.
Adam Hunt
Adam Hunt • diaspora
I have been on D* just about from the start and I love it here, there are great people, a calm atmosphere and interesting conversations.

That said, look at where we are almost 15 years along: https://the-federation.info/protocol/1
Nodes: 1,857
Users: 12,100
Last 6 months users: 2,605
Last month users: 1,569
Posts: 1,817,266
Comments: 440,706

That "Last month users: 1,569" feels about right, too. D* is a great place to be, but it would be a stretch for anyone to say that having 1,569 active users after 15 years is a success.
Adam Hunt
Adam Hunt • diaspora
and listen to the internet squeal!
Azure Cerulean
Azure Cerulean • diaspora
KBin: https://kbin.social/u/AzureCerulean
Lemmy: https://lemmy.ml/u/AzureCerulean
Mastodon: https://4bear.com/@AzureCerulean @[email protected]
PixelFed: https://metapixl.com/@AzureCerulean
Adam Hunt
Adam Hunt • diaspora
Bluesky has seen massive growth in the weeks following the US election. As of Tuesday, there are 24 million users on the social media platform. With great engagement comes great responsibility, which means Bluesky CEO Jay Graber has to do a lot to keep her promise to not “enshittify” the platform with ads while still funding its explosive growth.
...
Enshittification, as its known, generally comes as social media platforms expand and need to squeeze money out of users in order to please investors and keep the lights on. Since Bluesky doesn’t plan to run ads, WIRED senior writer Kate Knibbs asked, how does Bluesky plan to make money? “Subscriptions are the first step,” Graber said, referring to a plan to have users pay a regular fee for the ability to upload higher-quality video, for example, or access certain customization features.