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So, apparently targeted advertsing may be coming to #Bluesky...
This is not a surprise at all, and has been predicted for a while. Despite the protestations from Bluesky enthusiasts saying that selling domain names was going to do it, the BS business plan never made any sense.
And now they are paying for server costs for 20+ million users and watching their $15M investment from Blockchain Capital et al. dwindle.
Reality bites, and it bites hard.
Robert Link
@mastodonmigration But peeps gonna come here and shill that service at me then whine when I don't like them. Oy.
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And there's more...
"The company has raised $15 million so far, and CEO Jay Graber tells TechCrunch she’s already getting attention from other investors."
What other investors? Are they billionaires? Do they have ties to Russia?
Friends, Jay Graber is likely sincere in her desire to avoid enshitification. The problem is that there is no way to do so given the economics of corporate social media, so all her good intentions are worthless.
Open public social media is the only defensible option.
Mastodon Migration
This from Graber:
“I think the ways we would explore advertising, if we did, would be much more user intent-driven... We want to keep our incentives aligned with users and make sure that we’re not turning into a model where the user’s attention is the product.”
Hmmm... "user intent driven ads" what's that sound like? How are they going to glean the user's intent?
Folks, this is the same old nonsense dressed up in a new shiny package.
Darwin Woodka
Hmmm, my intent is to not see ads
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"100 contract trust and safety people"
That simply doesn't pencil out.
Hrefna (DHC)
What about it does not pencil out to you?
The Nexus of Privacy
@mastodonmigration they’ve always been careful not to rule out advertising so I doubt anybody there is surprised by this. A lot depends on market conditions when they do their next raise - they were smart to close the $15 M when they did, and my guess is their server costs won’t eat into that too quickly, but then again they’re hiring 100 contract trust and safety people and that might be just the tip of the iceberg. It wouldn’t surprise me if they try some kind of premium subscription before advertising but it’s hard to know far get they can get with that. Time will tell!
Hrefna (DHC)
Honestly in their position I wouldn't be quick to make promises that end up needing to be reevaluated later either. Especially when the reaction will be _so much_ worse if they say one thing and do another later on.
They don't have a reliable funding model yet and until they do I'd expect that they will leave options open, to tempt investors with future possibilities if nothing else.
Mastodon Migration
"Reliable funding model" makes it sound like alchemy. They are spending more than they are taking in, by a lot. They will need to make money somehow to stay in business or keep getting diluted by future investment. It's just business.
Hrefna (DHC)
It doesn't make it sound like alchemy to me. It sounds like "just business."
They need a funding model. This has been true from the beginning. They don't have one, they need one, but it hasn't been clear even to them what it will look like.
So they aren't closing doors on what that funding model might look like until they have more information on what they are becoming, since they've already diverged somewhat from where they started there.
Hrefna (DHC)
If you want to make that $15 million seem either gigantic or trivially small I can do that very easily, the range of values—depending on what you need and what you are trying to accomplish—is so large. It depends on a variety of assumptions we don't know, and I don't know their current operating costs
We're basically going to be arguing over fermi estimates, and that's a fun thought exercise but won't get us all that far if there's a point.
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What's the avg monthly cost of a contract trust and safety person?
Hrefna (DHC)
It's definition—as in the one used in business and in this context— is a "methodical and institutionalized approach to building a reliable revenue base that will support an organization's core programs and services." (https://www.bridgespan.org/insights/funding-models).
It sounds like you understand what a funding model is, but are just objecting to the language, but I'm not sure why when that's what the term is widely understood to mean?
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OK. Didn't mean to be dismissive with the reference to alchemy. Only point is that they either need to make money or keep getting more investment which will further dilute their ownership interests. It is, just business.
The term "funding model" makes it sound like there is some magical way to keep a business running that doesn’t involve bringing in revenue. It would just be simpler to say they need to figure out a way to make money.
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$15M is not a lot of money when you start throwing around numbers like 100 contract employees. This isn't rocket science. It's just business. Anyone can do the math. 20 full time employees at tech industry salaries plus these 100 contract folks at whatever they cost times 2 for overhead. Plus other costs like hosting, rent etc
There is nothing evil about this. It just means you need to balance the equation by either making money or getting more investment.
Hrefna (DHC)
Depending on where they are and what kind of trust and safety work they are expected to be doing that could be—with overhead—as little as $1k per worker per month.
Or less.
Or it could be as much as $5-10k per month.
The range on this is gigantic and it depends on too many factors that are not revealed by just saying they are hiring 100 people for a task.
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Fine. Only good ads.
The Nexus of Privacy
@mastodonmigration which is what she’s saying now, with “user intent”. Of course it’s one thing to say it, and another to actually do it, but there are enough situations where enough people are ok with ads that it’s not impossible — and there’s no real value in showing ads to people who don’t want to see them, so there business model still works if you implement an easy-to-use opt-out or even opt-in
(Even in that situation, ads are arguably still problematic, so I’m not endorsing that model, I’m just saying that “only ads people want to see “ is a potentially non-enshittifying model, so what they’ve been saying is consistent)
Hrefna (DHC)
There are several ad models that have varying ethical and moral questions associated with them.
Like it has been known forever (foundational late-90s-to-early-00s CRM-style) that if you advertise exclusively to people who opt into your advertising and you target them with what they have asked you to target them with you get excellent results.
I won't say any of them are necessarily good, but they do fit with the statements that have been made so far
Mastodon Migration
Actually, they kind of did...
https://www.thekeyword.co/news/bluesky-says-it-has-no-plans-to-introduce-ads-to-the-platform
The Nexus of Privacy
@mastodonmigration read what she said carefully. She did get say “no ads”, she said “no ads that enshittify the network”
Hrefna (DHC)
There are also a lot—a lot a lot—of things you can do that amount to advertising funding you, but _indirectly_. For instance, charging money for the kinds of features that brands like, which then allow brands to better use your plaform, which then itself allows a form of advertising (think Wendy's twitter).
You aren't making money from ads directly, and yet you are still enabling something very much like advertising.
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