Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Tuesday, January 7th.

Today on Forbes, how Jay Graber is making sure Blue Sky never turns into Elon Musk's X.

Two months after the social network Blue Sky launched in February 2023, it got its first bona fide celebrity user, the humorist

known as Drill. An absurdist Twitter character, once described by the New Yorker as, quote,

one of America's incisive, ongoing works of social criticism, drill had a finger on the pulse of

Twitter's decades-old chaotic energy, and that energy was

headed to blue sky.

Despite his nearly 2 million followers at the time, Elon Musk's ex was no longer working

for him, Drill told Forbes.

He said, quote, their algorithm has been more aggressively prioritizing moronic political commentators and

crypto-scammers, while pushing aside the people you actually follow.

If Blue Sky can market itself as a sort of last bastion against ad bots, AI crap, and nefarious

algorithms, I think it will be in a very strong position.

Blue Sky was never meant to be an app, or even a company.

It began as an open-source research project at Twitter, a skunk works team helmed by

open internet evangelist Jay Graber.

Graber's mandate was to build a protocol, a shared language that computers could use to talk

to each other, designed specifically for social media.

Through the AT protocol, or authenticated transfer, Twitter and other companies would be able to exchange information with one another,

creating an open network where posts could be freely shared across social platforms.

But after Elon Musk bought Twitter, it became clear that Blue Sky was no longer on its roadmap.

Twitter under Musk began to transform, facing an advertiser boycott, exodus of users, and eventually a name change to X.

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