Discussion
So, been reading some of the hand wringing over on #Bluesky about their dismal MAU numbers, and what is interesting is the fear that they engender among users who are worried that the company will not continue to be able to operate if their venture capitalist owners decide it will never be the 'next big thing.'
Basically, like all VC backed companies, there is a 'runway' during which the investment has to either make money or prove worthy of more invested capital.
-more-
@mastodonmigration ultimately, the deal we make is to use good things while they are free, and then move on when the monetization ruins them.
This is inevitable.
So, what users are correctly worried about is if Bluesky is going to come to the end of their runway.
This is what happens when you take a bunch of funding and don't make any money. If you can show "growth" you've got a "story" that can get you another "round." No growth, no story, no more money.
This is markedly different from the Fedi, that lives within its means, thanks to our amazing instance operators and user donations. Here there is no runway, so no one can pull the plug.
"This is what happens when you take a bunch of funding and don't make any money. If you can show "growth" you've got a "story" that can get you another "round." No growth, no story, no more money."
Going to loop back into this, because for the last week or so I've notice this interesting anecdote
I follow the Bluesky Github (and some 12 other "Fediverse" distros...)
Work on the Bluesky distro now is a never-ending stream of:
@[______] pushed 6 commits. (PR # 11379)
claude[bot] left a comment (bluesky-social/social-app# 11379)
claude[bot] left a comment (bluesky-social/social-app# 11379)
The Claudebot posts average easily two-to-one for almost all human posts, so much so that it's actually hard to manage my email folder because the volume is so heavy
May 'mean' nothing; again, just an anecdote...
Here, for one https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/pull/11451#issuecomment-5264856955
That's really interesting.
Yeah
Not sure what to make of it, other than the usual question: "OK, fine, so who is checking Claude's work?"
@mastodonmigration Yeah, I think this is the real story about investment money - regardless of what you think about investors in general, or these investors in particular - it changes the criteria from "is there a healthy community and ecosystem?" to "is there growth?"
I think the atproto ecosystem is looking quite healthy. There's a huge amount of interesting stuff going on over there. There are plenty of people who probably aren't going anywhere anytime soon. In a better world, that would be enough. It would be fine to hang out in a (fairly) steady state user-wise for a while - maybe before really taking off numbers-wise, or maybe indefinitely. But the world of investing is not that better world.
I don't think things are super dire over there yet. The company isn't finished. It might still find its business model. There are communities and projects that might be okay, and even thrive, if Bluesky-the-company were to bite it.
But they live in a more dangerous world, and there appears to be greater structural risk. It's a choice the company made. I hope that, one way or another, the users and developers don't pay for that choice - that would be a real waste.
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