BlueSky Announces $8M Fundraising and Paid Services
Bluesky, a decentralized social network developed by Jack Dorsey, also known as the creator of Twitter, has launched a paid domain service. This is the company’s first step towards monetizing the service in its quest to remain ad-free.
As noted, the company believes that users become a product when the company relies on advertising. Instead, Bluesky decided to explore other ways to monetize, starting with paid services like domain names.
Users can now set up their own domain names for use with Bluesky, but they have to go through a separate domain registration process to do so. With the Namecheap integration, they can make it much faster and easier by simply logging into their account, selecting a domain name, and paying for it.
Users using the integrated service will be able to manage their domain settings and configurations in Bluesky and forward emails sent to their domains to an address of their choice. They can also choose to redirect their domain to their Bluesky profile or any URL they want. In case users decide to leave the platform or use another registrar, they can transfer their domain.
According to Bluesky, the company plans to use the new funding to expand its team and improve the decentralized AT protocol that powers the Bluesky app, among other things.
The company also said that while the protocol and client source code has been made public, it also wants to be transparent about its business plans, “experimenting with different strategies and services to see what delivers real value to our users.”
