Bluesky’s new CEO wants a big tent, not a bubble
Bluesky’s new CEO wants a big tent, not a bubble
Bluesky 新任 CEO：想要一个“大帐篷”，而不是一个“气泡”
Today, I’m talking with Toni Schneider, who is the brand new CEO of the social platform Bluesky — he formally took over after a short stint as interim CEO. 今天，我采访了社交平台 Bluesky 的新任 CEO 托尼·施奈德（Toni Schneider）——他在担任了一段时间的临时 CEO 后，正式接管了这一职位。
This is one of my favorite kinds of interviews to do on Decoder, because a couple years ago, we had Bluesky’s prior CEO, Jay Graber, on the show — she’s now the company’s chief innovation officer, and all of that kind of shuffle is pure Decoder bait. And a new CEO often brings with them new priorities, which is perhaps the most Decoder subject of all. 这是我最喜欢在《Decoder》节目中进行的访谈类型之一，因为几年前，我们曾邀请 Bluesky 的前任 CEO 杰伊·格拉伯（Jay Graber）上过节目——她现在是公司的首席创新官，这种人事变动简直是《Decoder》节目的“诱饵”。而一位新任 CEO 往往会带来新的工作重点，这或许是《Decoder》最核心的主题。
Bluesky in particular is a company pulling in a lot of different directions: There’s a Twitter-like social media app, which is what most people are familiar with, and then there’s the underlying technology behind that app call AT Protocol, which allows anyone to build social networking products that interoperate with Bluesky. As you’ll hear Toni say, that ecosystem is vibrant and growing — it’s called the ATmosphere, which is adorable. Bluesky 是一家正朝着多个不同方向发展的公司：它既有一个大多数人熟悉的、类似 Twitter 的社交媒体应用，也有该应用背后的底层技术——AT 协议（AT Protocol），它允许任何人构建与 Bluesky 互操作的社交网络产品。正如你稍后会听到托尼所说的，这个生态系统充满活力且正在增长——它被称为“ATmosphere”（AT 氛围），这个名字非常可爱。
But the users of Bluesky the app are not the same as the people building on AT Protocol, and the goals of a company founded to push forward the ideas of open and interoperable social standards are not necessarily aligned with the things all those users might need or want. This is a fight that bursts into view on Bluesky itself all the time, and I wanted to know how Toni thinks about balancing all of that with what remains a fairly small team. 但 Bluesky 应用的用户与在 AT 协议上进行开发的人群并不完全重合，而一家旨在推动开放和互操作社交标准理念的公司，其目标也未必与所有用户所需所想完全一致。这种矛盾在 Bluesky 平台上时常爆发，我想了解托尼如何在保持团队规模相对较小的情况下平衡这一切。
Toni was formerly the CEO of Automattic, which makes the huge WordPress web content management platform, and you’ll hear him make the case that this period in social networking feels a lot like the early days of the web, and that success looks like a vibrant ecosystem with lots of big players that might take a decade to fully develop. 托尼曾是 Automattic 的 CEO，该公司打造了庞大的 WordPress 网络内容管理平台。你会听到他提出一个观点：当前的社交网络时期非常像互联网的早期阶段，而成功意味着一个拥有许多大型参与者的充满活力的生态系统，这可能需要十年时间才能完全成熟。
That’s quite a vision, but here and now, the open web is falling apart, and the social products of today are fragmenting and in many cases either get smaller or full of AI slop. So we talked about all of that, and about Bluesky’s reputation as a bastion of leftists insulated in their own little bubble sitting next to the increasingly hard right bubble of X. And of course, we talked about how Bluesky might start to generate revenue — and interestingly enough, it’s not just ads. 这是一个宏大的愿景，但放眼当下，开放网络正在瓦解，今天的社交产品正趋于碎片化，在许多情况下，它们要么规模萎缩，要么充斥着 AI 生成的垃圾内容。因此，我们讨论了所有这些问题，以及 Bluesky 作为“左翼堡垒”的声誉——即它被隔离在自己的小气泡中，与 X 平台上日益右倾的气泡并存。当然，我们也讨论了 Bluesky 可能如何开始创收——有趣的是，这不仅仅依靠广告。
Toni Schneider, you are a venture partner at True Ventures, and more importantly, the now permanent CEO of Bluesky. Welcome to Decoder. 托尼·施奈德，你是 True Ventures 的风险合伙人，更重要的是，你现在是 Bluesky 的常任 CEO。欢迎来到《Decoder》。
Thank you. Thanks for having me. 谢谢。感谢邀请我参加。
I am very excited to talk to you. What is happening with the open social web is maybe the most important thing happening for media. It does not get as much attention as AI, but there’s something very big happening on these interoperable social networks. I know that you are a believer in it in the same way that you believed in the web when you were the CEO of Automattic, which is the company that makes WordPress. So let’s just start at the very start. Describe what you think Bluesky is today and what you think the opportunities with these new kinds of networks are. 我非常兴奋能与你交谈。开放社交网络正在发生的事情，可能是媒体领域最重要的事件。它虽然没有像 AI 那样受到关注，但在这些可互操作的社交网络上，确实正在发生一些非常重大的事情。我知道你对此深信不疑，就像你当年担任 WordPress 母公司 Automattic 的 CEO 时相信互联网一样。那么，让我们从最基础的开始。请描述一下你眼中的 Bluesky，以及你认为这些新型网络蕴含着怎样的机遇。
Bluesky today is really two things. There’s the Bluesky app, which is what a lot of people are familiar with. It’s a social network. We think it’s a better social network. It’s more human focused, doesn’t have ads. It doesn’t have algorithms. But more importantly, underneath Bluesky is an open protocol called AT Protocol. And Bluesky is only one of now over a thousand apps built on that protocol. 今天的 Bluesky 实际上包含两部分。首先是 Bluesky 应用，这是许多人所熟悉的。它是一个社交网络。我们认为它是一个更好的社交网络，因为它更以人为本，没有广告，也没有算法。但更重要的是，Bluesky 的底层是一个名为 AT 协议（AT Protocol）的开放协议。而 Bluesky 只是目前基于该协议构建的一千多个应用中的一个。
The whole point of Bluesky was to demonstrate that this open protocol could scale and attract other builders, building lots of apps, lots of social experiences that all interoperate and connect with each other, which is what we believe the future of social media should look like. It’s what is actually going to make social media something that we believe in, which is that the future of social media should serve the public good. That is what motivates us, and that’s why we built the protocol first and then the app. Bluesky 的核心意义在于证明这种开放协议能够扩展，并吸引其他开发者构建大量的应用和社交体验，使它们能够互操作并相互连接。我们认为这才是社交媒体未来的样子。这正是让社交媒体成为我们所信仰之物的关键——即社交媒体的未来应该服务于公共利益。这就是我们的动力所在，也是我们先构建协议、再构建应用的原因。