Bluesky’s interim CEO, Toni Schneider, drops the ‘interim’

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’s combination rocket and AI company, SpaceXAI).

Under Graber, the site grew to 43 million users, while the site’s underlying technology, the AT Protocol — a system that lets Bluesky and other apps share the same social network — was significantly expanded.

Lately, though, the site has struggled to retain or grow its user base. Some have questioned whether it is dying — pointing to apparent declines in both engagement and its overall community of users. Bluesky saw a sharp rise in users in the wake of Donald Trump’s re-election (when Elon Musk was most active in politics), but the site appears to have seen a drop off since then.

In short: Schneider will have his work cut out for him. He seems game for it, though. “We’re at the very beginning of this story,” he wrote Friday.