Bluesky's newly permanent CEO, Toni Schneider, has laid out his vision for growing both the social media app and the underlying AT Protocol that powers it, in an interview on The Verge's Decoder podcast. Schneider, formerly CEO of WordPress-maker Automattic, took over after a period as interim chief following Jay Graber's move to chief innovation officer, and he frames the current moment in social networking as similar to the early days of the open web, arguing that a thriving ecosystem of interoperable platforms could take a decade to fully mature. The interview matters because it highlights the tension at the heart of Bluesky's strategy: balancing the needs of everyday app users against the developers building on its open protocol, all with a relatively small team.

The conversation, which Schneider gave as he formally stepped into the top role, covers Bluesky's reputation as a left-leaning "bubble" sitting apart from a harder-right X, and his ambition to broaden the platform's appeal rather than let it remain insular. He also discussed how the "ATmosphere" of apps built on AT Protocol is expanding, and touched on plans for the company to generate revenue through means beyond advertising, though specifics were not detailed in the excerpt.