Why Knight Foundation Invested in Bluesky
Newsrooms have been slow to care about the open social web - but one of their most important support organizations is paying attention.
[John Sands at The Knight Foundation]
This was exciting news at the exact intersection I’m interested in:
“Last year, Knight Foundation joined in a $100 million Series B funding round for the social media company Bluesky.”
The funding round was led by Bain Capital Crypto. What strange bedfellows: the crypto investment arm of a famous global investment firm, and a national private foundation dedicated to fostering informed, equitable, and engaged communities. But Bluesky lives at that intersection; fostering better communities in a pro-social way while building an open platform that could potentially build a lot of value.
What’s most exciting to me is that Knight cares about the open social web at all. I think it’s vying for the most important technical development for newsrooms: the most promising way for them to build first-party connections with their audiences, subscribers, and communities. Most of the newsrooms themselves don’t seem to care all that much, to be frank, but it’s good to see that one of the most important support organizations is paying attention. Hopefully that can be a signal for others to tune in.
[Link]
