Jay Graber is relinquishing his role as chief executive officer of Bluesky and will take on the newly defined post of chief innovation officer at the social media company, the firm said in a blog post on its website.
Graber, who became Bluesky’s CEO in 2021, will be succeeded on an interim basis by Toni Schneider, an investor and adviser to the company. Schneider stepped into the temporary CEO role after posting the announcement on the company blog.
Schneider brings executive and investor experience to the interim post. She is the former chief executive of Automattic and currently serves as a partner at True Ventures. Schneider has been connected to Bluesky as an investor and adviser for the past two years.
Bluesky said the board has initiated a search for a permanent chief executive. The company did not provide further details about the timeline for that search or the criteria it will use to evaluate candidates in the blog post.
The platform has more than 40 million users. Bluesky was originally incubated inside Twitter in 2019 as a project started by Jack Dorsey, and it was established as an independent company in 2021.
Bluesky experienced a notable influx of users in November 2024 when some users migrated away from X, formerly known as Twitter. That movement followed the election of Donald Trump as U.S. President and a change to X’s terms of service that the announcement said could complicate legal challenges for the Elon Musk-owned platform.
Summary of the transition and company context:
- Graber moves from CEO to chief innovation officer after leading Bluesky since 2021.
- Toni Schneider, an adviser and investor, becomes interim CEO; the board has begun a search for a permanent leader.
- Bluesky counts more than 40 million users and expanded its user base following a November 2024 migration away from X.