Bluesky, a decentralised Twitter alternative has raised $8 million in a seed round led by Neo, a community-led startup. The round saw the participation of partners like Ali Partovi, co-founder of Code.org, and Suzanne Xie, former director of product management at Twitter. Angel investors joined forces, with participation by Kubernetes co-creator Joe Beda, Red Hat’s Bob Young, Replit’s Amjad Masad, Automattic’s Jeromy Johnson, Protocol Labs’ Sarah Drasner, Katelyn Donnelly, Ali Evans, Stav Erez, Brad Fitzpatrick, Abdul Ly, and others to close the round.
This summer, when it changed its legal structure from an LLC to a C corp for the public good, the company announced that it had collected $8 million in early funding. Meanwhile, users who like a custom domain for their Bluesky handle will soon be able to purchase this service from Bluesky for a fee.
Bluesky’s growth plans
After its inception as an internal Twitter project, Bluesky was spun off as its own company to develop technology to support decentralised social networking. With the new funds, the company plans to hire more people, pay for rising operating and infrastructure costs, and develop both the AT Protocol ecosystem and the Bluesky app.
The protocol and client’s source code have been released publicly, and the company promises to be open and honest about its future as it tries out alternative marketing and service models to determine which ones end up being the most successful.
The company says it recognises that social media sites traditionally rely heavily on advertising, which might make users feel like they’re being used as a product without their knowledge. However, it aims to carve its own path by charging for certain of its services and trying out new approaches to delivering actual value to its customers. Starting with a collaboration with domain registrar Namecheap, Bluesky is releasing paid services. With Bluesky and the AT Protocol, users can quickly and easily make their own domain their username.