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In March, Bluesky\u2019s longtime CEO, Jay Graber, stepped down<\/a> from that role to become its chief innovation officer. Graber was immediately succeeded by Toni Schneider, the founding CEO of Automattic, which is the company behind WordPress and Tumblr.<\/p>\n Schneider, who has led the company as interim CEO for the past four months, is now dropping the \u201cinterim\u201d status and becoming its permanent chief executive.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m four months into my interim CEO role at Bluesky, and it\u2019s time for an update,\u201d Schneider wrote on his personal blog<\/a>. \u201cMost importantly, as of today, the interim part of the title is gone. I\u2019m loving the mission and the job, and I\u2019m all in as Bluesky\u2019s official CEO.\u201d <\/p>\n In the post, Schneider said that one of his first orders of business is to \u201ccreate smaller spaces and more private communities,\u201d which he said would \u201cunlock the next wave of growth and innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n Automattic and True Ventures, which is a venture capital firm where Schneider is a partner, are both\u00a0investors<\/a>\u00a0in Bluesky.<\/p>\n Bluesky, which was originally spun off from Twitter, became a haven for those who wished to avoid the changes Elon Musk brought to the platform after he took it over in 2022 (the site was eventually renamed X and now it is a subsidiary of Musk\u2019s combination rocket and AI company, SpaceXAI).<\/p>\n Under Graber, the site grew to\u00a043 million users<\/a>, while the site\u2019s underlying technology, the AT Protocol \u2014 a system that lets Bluesky and other apps share the same social network \u2014 was significantly expanded.<\/p>\n Lately, though, the site has struggled to retain or grow its user base. Some have questioned whether it is dying<\/a> \u2014 pointing to apparent declines in both engagement and its overall community of users. Bluesky saw a sharp rise in users<\/a> in the wake of Donald Trump\u2019s re-election (when Elon Musk was most active in politics), but the site appears to have seen a drop off<\/a> since then.<\/p>\n In short: Schneider will have his work cut out for him. He seems game for it, though. \u201cWe\u2019re at the very beginning of this story,\u201d he wrote Friday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n