Bryan Cantrill

Paul, thank you very much for joining us. I am super stoked for this today.

Oh, I... I'm not convinced that there's only one of you. Especially in those early days of Blue Sky, you were everywhere at once, I just felt. It's been remarkable. I'm not sure how many of you there are, but I appreciate your collective allowing one of you to come speak with us today. Yeah.

Exactly. Paul, there's so much to talk about here. But, I mean, you all have been on just an incredible ride. I mean, it's a hard... I mean, having watched this thing from when it was invite-only for kind of a protracted period of time, and then just going, I mean, non-linear, not in the metaphorical sense, but the actual literal quantitative sense, has just been amazing.

And I want to get to a bunch of that, but before, do you mind, can we talk about Scuttlebutt? Is that inbounds?

Because I want to talk about Scuttlebutt and Beaker. People think they're in here to talk about Blue Sky and Blue Sky, but we're actually talking about Scuttlebutt and Beaker. So, Scuttlebutt, could you describe what Scuttlebutt is and how you got involved in Scuttlebutt?

Because this is obviously a problem that you have been thinking about, and I think this is true for a lot of folks on the Blue Sky team. People have been coming from different angles thinking about this problem for a long period of time. How did you get into Scuttlebutt?

Yeah. Was that as a kind of a response? Because I mean, this is like Pretty early. I mean, this is before the animals were walking on their hind feet in terms of social networks. Or maybe they were already. Maybe they were born on their hind feet.

Pretty prescient, I have to say. Because I feel like in 2012, honestly, maybe I'm just a dunce, but it felt like it was kind of the good old days for Twitter. I mean, it felt like it was fun and light. And maybe Gamergate changed that. I'm trying to kind of replay that era in my head. But definitely, this was... I mean, this is like, why wouldn't anyone like Facebook?

Facebook just feels like a net good for society in 2012, says I. I mean, I just feel like I was, anyway, I was very naive. I mean, I felt like at that era... the, I mean, it was more like Twitter was finally kind of functional. I mean, there was such a long period of time where it was just not very functional. Um, and it could kind of keep up with everything and everything else.

So I really admire the prescience of people saying like, no, there's like a, there's a, there's a centralization of authority here. That's actually problematic. Um, and, Then I got to ask you, were folks like, you know what, I'm burning my boats on Secure Scuttlebutt and I'm now like, you can't find me on any other social network? Or was...

with blue sky yeah we were just like what are we doing to ourselves i mean honestly it explains so much too because i think and i just want to like not lose us say kind of off the jump the blue sky is so remarkably available and remarkably usable in a remarkably short period of time and

You know, it's not surprising, of course, that you all come with this scar tissue from these other endeavors where you had tried other things. Because, I mean, and I think that, I mean, speaking as a user, I mean, social networking is really important to me personally. And what you all have done is so extraordinary. And, like, there's been no fail whale.

You know, I mean, it's like the closest we get is, like, Health Red, which obviously I love. But the... I'm sure you're like, listen, let's not paper over it too much.

There have been plenty of... Just when you're adding millions of users a day and you are retaining... It's so responsive and it feels quick and lively and you're not getting... It's not at all a surprise that, of course, you're learning a lot from these previous systems and

So you said there were a couple of things that you knew you wanted to, that you all kind of collectively from your experience knew that you wanted to replicate and some things you wanted to improve upon. What were some of the things you wanted to replicate?

And I can say, I mean, I love both of these things I think are extremely important. I think that the, obviously, I mean, the portability, it should go without saying, but one of the ways that I realized how just viscerally important this is to me, and this is a super stupid thing, but just in terms of my own age and social networking, tracking my own life,

my first two kids I announced with a blog entry, but my third kid born in 2012, I announced for the tweet. Um, the, so that tweet, for whatever reason, like the replies on that tweet have been deleted by Twitter and, or I can't find them anyway. And it's like, damn it.

In terms of that portability, I feel like, and of course, what idiot would announce the birth of their children on social media and expect it to be retained anywhere? Look, she doesn't have a baby book. She's a third kid. This was her baby book. There's going to be the replies on this tweet. Okay. If, if you are a third kid or you have three kids, you know what I'm talking about?

She's, she's lucky. She's got a tweet. Okay. She knows that she knows she's lucky. She's great. But the, so, I mean, just like having that portability is, is, is really, really, really important to people. And it is a, in order for us to really engage in social networking, we absolutely have to have that portability. So, I mean, obviously I love that. Hey, I don't know what her name is.

You're saying I do know her name. Hold on just a second. Let me actually, you will add up my nine. I've said this before, but she, the day she was born, we, the CEO of the startup I was at was fired. Yes. And fortunately she's got a very good sense of humor. So she's like, Hey dad, it was 12 years ago today. Your CEO was fired. I'm like, it's, Is this going to go on for your entire life?