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I wish Bluesky would finally announce how they plan to monetise it all. It feels like things are stuck in-between trying to be “open to the community”, gather d

by isodev 1y ago

I wish Bluesky would finally announce how they plan to monetise it all. It feels like things are stuck in-between trying to be “open to the community”, gather developer momentum around ATProto, the promise of decentralisation and independence… and the unknowns of their roadmap ahead? It’s all very nicely written but the risk of committing oneself (as a user, as a developer, as a social/marketing person, etc) only to get surprised by what/how they generate profit from is just unsettling.

mr90210 1y ago
It's possible that they are uncertain about the path to monetisation. As far as I see, it's either subscriptions or selling ads.
- isodev 1y ago
  Their uncertainty is magnified on the outside tbh. e.g. There are other things at play that can (probably will) cost a lot of money. The protocol (ATProto) they’re developing and advocating as a “platform”. Say I’m building a cool app around that, how do I plan how much is this going to cost me and can I stomach the risk of binding myself to this “supposedly open” platform without knowing how it will work in 6 months?
add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
The best way to think about it is to assume you'll want to leave someday, and you'll be going to whichever is the best of the choices at that future time that are early enough to be years away from needing to monetize. Don't let yourself get attached to any one place. That's the lesson. Staying ahead of monetization is the move. Nothing will stay good forever.
ttiurani 1y ago
> the promise of decentralisation AFAIK actual decentralization needs still a big engineering effort. I personally can't even imagine a world where their VC investors would ever sign off a "let's make it possible, easy and risk free the users to exit our silo" project, over the many ways they try to squeeze profit out of their users.
- isodev 1y ago
  Same, that’s why I said “the promise of”. Also how do they plan to bill actors in this decentralised system? Is it going to be developers footing the bill? Some premium features only “the main Bluesky instance” has? It’s not clear to me at all.
- jacob2161 1y ago
  Bluesky is built on atproto, which is designed to be "locked open" in a way that can't be rescinded. That was a core design constraint. VCs funded Netscape which did more than any other company to launch the web and they made a lot of money without having to destroy the ideals of the web.
  - evbogue 1y ago
    The PDSes (personal data servers) can be independantly hosted, but Bluesky itself indexes and presents the messages these servers contain in their social-app. Bluesky also maintains the directory of these servers.
    - jacob2161 1y ago
      Anyone else is also free to run these services (app views, relays) and a few people already are doing this. An atproto PDS is like a structured-data blog hosted on a web server. Anyone is free to index, relay, and render the data.
      - evbogue 1y ago
        Yes, and running these things is prohibitively difficult such as I've only witnessed two full index attempts and no alternative plc directories. Bluesky should make these easier so your average Linux admin can attempt to host the full stack, as opposed to only being able to host a PDS. This would eliminate the criticism about Bluesky's design.
        jacob2161 1y ago
jacob2161 1y ago
I believe this isn't as much of a problem as it appears to be at first glance because of the scale of social apps like Bluesky. For example, Wikipedia generates >$180M/yr just by running ads for itself requesting donations. Requesting donations is the least effective monetizing strategy and yet it still works because of scale. Donations would probably work but Bluesky has additional options. They could create a premium app for power users that just adds nice-to-have features (which may cost real money to provide and maintain), they can resell domain names, they can sell merch, etc. Bluesky doesn't need to generate billions of dollars to be highly sustainable and profitable. It was built and scaled with fewer than 20 full time employees. The most important and most difficult part is getting to sufficient scale, and that's mostly a matter of just making the app even better than it is today. I posted a bit about this here: https://bsky.app/profile/jacob.gold/post/3lr5j6o7emk2t https://bsky.app/profile/jacob.gold/post/3lr5j6o7emk2t
- isodev 1y ago
  > Bluesky doesn't need to generate billions of dollars Are you sure their investors share this vision?
  - jacob2161 1y ago
    1. I believe they actually could generate (low) billions of dollars without compromising at all, if they manage to reach true mainstream scale (>1 billion MAUs) 2. I really don't care if the investors/shareholders are disappointed as long as the PBC's mission is fulfilled. Also their control is relatively limited. Maybe I should have written added this: Disclaimer: I am a shareholder in Bluesky Social, PBC (former employee)
    - ijustlovemath 1y ago
      Aren't they at ~10M MAU and falling? At least that's the impression given by https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
      - 1y ago
lenerdenator 1y ago
My guess is, they're going to have to be okay with only reaching break-even or slightly over. That's the point, after all. If you're dissatisfied with how any of these decentralized protocol platforms are running things, you're technically free to start your own, and plenty of people have. Enshittification can't consume low barriers-to-entry markets.
dpow 1y ago
[dead]

by isodev 1y ago

mr90210 1y ago

It's possible that they are uncertain about the path to monetisation. As far as I see, it's either subscriptions or selling ads.

isodev 1y ago
Their uncertainty is magnified on the outside tbh. e.g. There are other things at play that can (probably will) cost a lot of money. The protocol (ATProto) they’re developing and advocating as a “platform”. Say I’m building a cool app around that, how do I plan how much is this going to cost me and can I stomach the risk of binding myself to this “supposedly open” platform without knowing how it will work in 6 months?

add-sub-mul-div 1y ago

The best way to think about it is to assume you'll want to leave someday, and you'll be going to whichever is the best of the choices at that future time that are early enough to be years away from needing to monetize. Don't let yourself get attached to any one place. That's the lesson. Staying ahead of monetization is the move. Nothing will stay good forever.

ttiurani 1y ago

> the promise of decentralisation AFAIK actual decentralization needs still a big engineering effort. I personally can't even imagine a world where their VC investors would ever sign off a "let's make it possible, easy and risk free the users to exit our silo" project, over the many ways they try to squeeze profit out of their users.

isodev 1y ago
Same, that’s why I said “the promise of”. Also how do they plan to bill actors in this decentralised system? Is it going to be developers footing the bill? Some premium features only “the main Bluesky instance” has? It’s not clear to me at all.
jacob2161 1y ago
Bluesky is built on atproto, which is designed to be "locked open" in a way that can't be rescinded. That was a core design constraint. VCs funded Netscape which did more than any other company to launch the web and they made a lot of money without having to destroy the ideals of the web.
- evbogue 1y ago
  The PDSes (personal data servers) can be independantly hosted, but Bluesky itself indexes and presents the messages these servers contain in their social-app. Bluesky also maintains the directory of these servers.
  - jacob2161 1y ago
    Anyone else is also free to run these services (app views, relays) and a few people already are doing this. An atproto PDS is like a structured-data blog hosted on a web server. Anyone is free to index, relay, and render the data.
    - evbogue 1y ago
      Yes, and running these things is prohibitively difficult such as I've only witnessed two full index attempts and no alternative plc directories. Bluesky should make these easier so your average Linux admin can attempt to host the full stack, as opposed to only being able to host a PDS. This would eliminate the criticism about Bluesky's design.
      - jacob2161 1y ago

jacob2161 1y ago

I believe this isn't as much of a problem as it appears to be at first glance because of the scale of social apps like Bluesky. For example, Wikipedia generates >$180M/yr just by running ads for itself requesting donations. Requesting donations is the least effective monetizing strategy and yet it still works because of scale. Donations would probably work but Bluesky has additional options. They could create a premium app for power users that just adds nice-to-have features (which may cost real money to provide and maintain), they can resell domain names, they can sell merch, etc. Bluesky doesn't need to generate billions of dollars to be highly sustainable and profitable. It was built and scaled with fewer than 20 full time employees. The most important and most difficult part is getting to sufficient scale, and that's mostly a matter of just making the app even better than it is today. I posted a bit about this here: https://bsky.app/profile/jacob.gold/post/3lr5j6o7emk2t https://bsky.app/profile/jacob.gold/post/3lr5j6o7emk2t

isodev 1y ago
> Bluesky doesn't need to generate billions of dollars Are you sure their investors share this vision?
- jacob2161 1y ago
  1. I believe they actually could generate (low) billions of dollars without compromising at all, if they manage to reach true mainstream scale (>1 billion MAUs) 2. I really don't care if the investors/shareholders are disappointed as long as the PBC's mission is fulfilled. Also their control is relatively limited. Maybe I should have written added this: Disclaimer: I am a shareholder in Bluesky Social, PBC (former employee)
  - ijustlovemath 1y ago
    Aren't they at ~10M MAU and falling? At least that's the impression given by https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
    - 1y ago

lenerdenator 1y ago

My guess is, they're going to have to be okay with only reaching break-even or slightly over. That's the point, after all. If you're dissatisfied with how any of these decentralized protocol platforms are running things, you're technically free to start your own, and plenty of people have. Enshittification can't consume low barriers-to-entry markets.

dpow 1y ago

[dead]