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Jay Graber

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Jay Graber
Jay Graber is giving a talk while outside, holding a phone behind a podium. There is a microphone on a stand and a laptop in front of her.
Graber in August 2024
Born
Lantian Graber

1991 (age 32–33)
EducationUniversity of Pennsylvania (BS)
OccupationSoftware engineer
Years active2014–present

Lantian "Jay" Graber (born 1991) is an American software engineer who has served since 2021 as the CEO of Bluesky, a microblogging social platform created in 2019 by Twitter's Jack Dorsey.

Early life

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Lantian Graber was born in 1991 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to a mother of Chinese descent, an acupuncturist by trade, and a math teacher father of Swiss descent.[1][2] Her mother grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution and emigrated in the 1980s, and named her "Lantian," meaning "blue sky" in Mandarin Chinese, as a wish for her to have "boundless freedom".[1] The similarity between Graber's given name and Bluesky is purely coincidental; Jack Dorsey had chosen the name "Bluesky" for the research initiative before Graber became involved with the project.[3]

Graber enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania in 2009 and later graduated with a BSc in Science, Technology, and Society.[1] During her senior year she won a grant to co-found a student time bank program.[1]

Career

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In 2015, Graber began working as a software engineer for SkuChain in Mountain View, California.[1] She then worked in a factory in Moses Lake, Washington, where she soldered together bitcoin mining equipment.[1] In 2016, she began working as a junior developer for the Zcash cryptocurrency.[1][4][5] In 2019, she founded the event planning website Happening, Inc.[1][4][5]

In August 2021, Graber became the first CEO of Bluesky, a microblogging social platform and public benefit company.[6][7][8] Bluesky had been conceived as a new initiative by Twitter's original owners in 2019, but evolved to become a competitor to Twitter following the 2022 acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk.[4][5][9][10]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h del Castillo, Michael (April 25, 2023). "Jack Dorsey-Backed Decentralized Twitter Rival Prepares to Launch with One Million Users". Forbes. Retrieved February 8, 2024.
  2. ^ Robison, Kylie (July 31, 2023). "Inside Twitter rival Bluesky's first major crisis, as investors pressured CEO Jay Graber to speak out about racist incident". Fortune. Yahoo! Finance. Retrieved August 18, 2023.
  3. ^ "The CEO of Bluesky's Actual Name Means "Blue Sky" in Chinese". Futurism. November 18, 2024. Retrieved November 22, 2024.
  4. ^ a b c Campbell, Ian Carlos (August 16, 2021). "Twitter's decentralized social network project finally has a leader". The Verge. Retrieved April 28, 2023.
  5. ^ a b c Matney, Lucas (August 16, 2021). "Twitter taps crypto developer to lead 'bluesky' decentralized social network effort". TechCrunch. Retrieved April 28, 2023.
  6. ^ del Castillo, Michael (September 11, 2022). "Jack Dorsey's Former Boss Is Building A Decentralized Twitter". Forbes. Retrieved April 28, 2023.
  7. ^ Heath, Alex (April 17, 2023). "Bluesky's CEO wants to build a Musk-proof, decentralized version of Twitter". The Verge. Retrieved April 28, 2023.
  8. ^ Dang, Sheila (August 16, 2021). "A Twitter-funded company trying to build a new kind of social media taps its first leader". CNBC. Retrieved April 28, 2023.
  9. ^ Belanger, Ashley (April 28, 2023). "Top Twitter influencers flee to Bluesky amid Musk's continued debasing". Ars Technica. Retrieved April 28, 2023.
  10. ^ Klee, Miles (April 27, 2023). "Bluesky Becomes the Hottest Club Online as Twitter Users Fight for Invites". Rolling Stone. Retrieved April 28, 2023.
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