Bluesky raises $15 million in Series A and plans to launch subscriptions

Decentralized social media app Bluesky announced on Thursday that it has raised $15 million in a Series A round after last yr’s $8 million seed round. The funding comes as Bluesky has seen a surge in growth, driven in part by X users who’re concerned about recent changes to the blocking feature, in addition to the power to allow third parties to train artificial intelligence on users’ public posts. In the last month alone, Bluesky added roughly 3 million recent users, bringing its total user base to roughly 13 million.

Bluesky was initially incubated at Twitter as former CEO Jack Dorsey’s vision of what the long run of social media should appear to be. However, the social networking site and creator of the open source AT Protocol isn’t any longer affiliated with Dorsey, who left the startup’s board earlier this yr. Still, a lot of Bluesky’s initial goals remain unchanged: like Mastodon, Bluesky’s AT protocol is decentralized, which implies that individuals will give you the chance to arrange their very own servers and social applications, and those outside the corporate could have visibility into what’s being developed and the way it is being developed .

“With this fundraising, we will continue to support and grow the Bluesky community, investing in trust and security, and supporting the ATmphere developer ecosystem” – Bluesky blog announcement reads. “Additionally, we will begin developing a subscription model that will include features such as higher quality video uploads or profile customization such as avatar colors and frames.”

The Bluesky team was quick to tell users that this paid tier wouldn’t be like X, where subscribers would receive exclusive blue checkmarks and algorithmic rating boosts, making their posts more visible.

“The way Twitter did subscriptions was basically a blueprint for how Bluesky shouldn’t do it” – Paul Frazee, Bluesky developer sent. “Pay to win features like gaining visibility or checking if you are a subscriber are simply wrong and are ruining the web for everyone.”

The Series A round is led by Blockchain Capital with participation from Alumni Ventures, True Ventures, SevenX, Darkmode’s Amir Shevat and Kubernetes co-founder Joe Beda. The presence of a cryptocurrency company may alarm skeptics, especially since CEO Jay Graber was once a software engineer at crypto firm Zcash, but Bluesky has actively assured users that the corporate shouldn’t be moving to web3.

“Our leader, Blockchain Capital, shares our philosophy that technology should serve the user, not the other way around – the technology used should never come at the expense of the user experience,” Bluesky said in its announcement. “This does not change the fact that the Bluesky app and the AT protocol do not use blockchains or cryptocurrencies, and we will not hyper-finance social experiences (via tokens, cryptocurrency trading, NFTs, etc.)”

Graber also announced that Kinjal Shah, general partner at Blockchain Capital, will join Bluesky’s board of directors.

“(Shah) shares our vision of a social media ecosystem that empowers users and supports developer freedom, and working together with her has been a terrific experience. Thanks to her support, we’re well prepared for development,” Graber he wrote.