I admit it: I most definitely rolled my eyes in 2019, when Twitter announced vague plans to build an "open and decentralized standard for social media".

At the time I didn't really understand what then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was trying to do — or why the head of a social media company with plenty of problems was messing around with plans to create more social media companies.

I get it now: Bluesky was a science project that aimed to let people build their own social networks. And that's still what it is at its core, says Bluesky CEO Jay Graber.

But in the meantime, Bluesky has also become an accidental Twitter rival, with some 36 million users. And most of them likely don't care about Bluesky's origins, or the fact that it's really supposed to be a technical framework for decentralized social media. Or what decentralized social media means, for that matter.

All of which means that talking to Graber about Bluesky means you're doing two things at once: Asking about how Bluesky, the app, works — and what Bluesky, the idea is. Which is what we did when we talked at Web Summit Vancouver in May.

Also discussed here: Why is Jack Dorsey mad about Bluesky? What’s up with ads and Bluesky? And who designs Jay Graber’s T-shirts?

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