Discussion
@stefan if $100 million is only a 3 year runway in ones business model, one has a dogshit business model in a world where $100 million can become $1 billion with the ease of a single purchase (of a US senator or investment fund for instance).
Bluesky The Company is doomed. but "video parity with twitter" as The Big Clever Solution is comedy gold. blowing $100 million on website features trying to keep up with the richest narcissist on Earth's vanity project is not good business strategy.
It looks like the videos from the PublicSpaces Conference have been uploaded.
https://video.publicspaces.net/c/pubconf/videos?sort=-publishedAt
Not seeing the one for "Libraries Pioneering the Digital Public Space", so seems like they're still being uploaded.
@stefan that user growth is basically 100% bot accounts connected to tags.pub though https://fedidb.com/servers/tags.pub
"Fediverse has completely 'radicalized' me in four years. [...] The more I learn about the culture of the fediverse, the more empowered I feel."
https://conference.publicspaces.net/en/live/3
https://conference.publicspaces.net/en/session/strength-through-diversity-1
@stefan There was some interesting recent analysis on market share in Germany by @netzbegruenung at https://netzbegruenung.de/blog/das-ende-der-dominanz-microblogging-wandel-in-deutschland-in-zahlen/
I don't think they have an English version of the post, but I trust you'll get the gist (or find a way to have it translated).
"Incentives are completely misaligned between users and platform providers.
[Mastodon] puts communities back in control."
https://conference.publicspaces.net/en/live/7
https://conference.publicspaces.net/en/session/growth-and-sustainability-of-the-open-social-web
#fediverse #SocialMedia #NextSocials #PublicSpaces #OpenSocialWeb
Interesting insight from Bluesky's COO.
"I think the reality is $100 million is a three-year runway."
EDIT: Now that the live stream is over, you can find the video here:
https://conference.publicspaces.net/en/session/growth-and-sustainability-of-the-open-social-web
The relevant part is at 37:57.
@stefan if $100 million is only a 3 year runway in ones business model, one has a dogshit business model in a world where $100 million can become $1 billion with the ease of a single purchase (of a US senator or investment fund for instance).
Bluesky The Company is doomed. but "video parity with twitter" as The Big Clever Solution is comedy gold. blowing $100 million on website features trying to keep up with the richest narcissist on Earth's vanity project is not good business strategy.
@stefan the "become reddit" thing is fairly rich too.
reddit's 21 years to achieve profitability is a smidge longer than the 3 years of "runway" the bluesky CEO has acknowledged exist. it is not clear from whence they intend to pull the other 18.
@stefan I’d be shocked if we’d collectively spent $10 million over the last 10 years of fedi. guess that makes us, uh, 33x Social Engineers? that’s better than 10x engineers, right?
@djsundog Yeah, I don't have a lot of hope for Bluesky the company.
But have you seen how much Blacksky, piggy-backing off their funding is getting done?
https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/116574703552426391
Blacksky's Rudy also said he "doesn't know how to pitch to VCs" and basically said that there are "no good VCs", so it sounds like he intends to keep Blacksky independent long-term.
Also, earlier in session she brought up the Reddit comparison mentioned in https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/04/bluesky-twitter-rival-reddit-social-media.html.
"Bluesky’s Chief Operating Officer Rose Wang told CNBC that the site saw its future not in rivalling X, but in taking inspiration from the online community forum Reddit."
@stefan Interesting that they "only" have 600,000 daily users.
I thought it was bigger than that.
Does anyone have a daily value for the Fediverse? I see monthly stats of around 1.1m, but that's probably a lot higher than the daily equivalent.
I guess it's difficult to calculate every day for a distributed system :(
@stefan that's a bit of a "pivot".
Surely the whole interface and layout etc would need reorganizing?
I guess removing the stupid 300 char posting limit would be a good start....
@stefan Did they close another round of investment?
@evan Not that I know, I believe this is in reference to https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-19-2026-series-b
@stefan when I hear that I just think of how it absolutely would let all the other people in the room keep afloat for a decade or more...
@stefan @mellifluousbox "growth...business cases..."
NOOOOOOOOO. Keep that "growth mindset" and capitalist bs OUT of fedi!
@stefan @mellifluousbox I welcome all libraries and non commercial community spaces but no business shit
@ailurocrat Yeah, these talks are a bit more "businessy".
Looks like I missed the library one, but I think it will be uploaded to https://video.publicspaces.net/c/pubconf/videos?sort=-publishedAt later.
Hmm, having trouble with the live stream. Bummer.
But I'm guessing the videos will be uploaded to https://video.publicspaces.net/c/pubconf/videos?sort=-publishedAt later, maybe.
EDIT: Seems to be okay now!
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