Bluesky’s Former CEO Jay Graber Unveils Her First Product in Innovation Chief Role |
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Bluesky’s Former CEO Jay Graber Unveils Her First Product in Innovation Chief Role
The former Bluesky CEO’s first product as chief innovation officer puts feed control directly in users’ hands.
Jay Graber, the former Bluesky CEO who recently moved into the role of chief innovation officer, has been in her new position for just a month. Yet her tenure has already produced a major release: Attie, an agentic app designed to help users customize their social media feeds and algorithms. Attie reflects many of the priorities Graber emphasized during her time leading Bluesky. It emphasizes personalization and puts generative A.I. in the hands of users rather than corporations. Unveiled on March 28, the app is currently in beta testing.
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Right now, most major social platforms are using A.I. to increase user time spent, harvest training data and develop opaque algorithms, said Graber, who noted that such companies should instead fix issues stemming from the technology, like floods of A.I.-generated content. “We think A.I. should serve people, not platforms.”
Built on top of Bluesky’s decentralized protocol, Attie allows users to create their own custom social media feeds simply by typing in requests. Examples on Attie’s website include: “show me electronic music and experimental sound from people in my network,” or “posts about folklore, mythology and traditional music; especially Celtic traditions.” Queries can be written in natural language rather than code, said Graber, noting that the rapid development of agentic tools has made it “increasingly possible to personalize software with no coding experience at all.”
Attie is the first product developed by Bluesky’s Exploration Team, a specialized unit led by Graber in her new role. She previously served as CEO for more than four years, having been appointed in 2021 by Jack Dorsey—then CEO of Twitter (now X)—to lead the Twitter-incubated company before it spun off as an independent entity.
Graber, who has also worked at blockchain company SkuChain, cryptocurrency project Zcash, and founded events app Happening, positioned her move from the CEO role as a return to her passion for “building new things.” Toni Schneider, former CEO of Automattic and a partner at True Ventures, has stepped in as interim CEO while Bluesky’s board searches for a permanent successor.
“I think she realized there was so much more that she wanted to build, and just doing the CEO job kept her busy,” Schneider told TechCrunch of Graber’s internal pivot in a recent interview. Since refocusing on products, “it has become clear that this is her happy place,” added Schneider, who described Attie as a people-focused A.I. product that will ensure the technology benefits all.
Shortly after the executive shakeup, Bluesky revealed that it had raised $100 million in a Series B funding round in April of last year. That investment, Schneider said, gives the company at least three years of financial runway.
It remains unclear whether Bluesky will eventually charge for Attie or keep it free. The platform is exploring various subscription and marketplace models but remains committed to staying ad-free. With 43 million users—many of whom joined after Elon Musk’s 2022 acquisition of Twitter—Bluesky has positioned itself as a “billionaire-proof” alternative to mainstream social media.
One thing is certain: Attie will stay a separate app from Bluesky, giving users the choice to opt in. As Bluesky evolves, Attie “will be where we experiment with agentic social,” said Graber. “I want it to accelerate decentralizing social and putting power back in users’ hands.”
SEE ALSO: A.I. Is Overhyped Yet Underappreciated, Says DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis
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