{"id":663120,"date":"2025-04-16T19:40:22","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T16:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/bluesky-feed-builder-graze-raises-1m-rolls-out-ads\/"},"modified":"2025-04-16T19:40:22","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T16:40:22","slug":"bluesky-feed-builder-graze-raises-1m-rolls-out-ads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/bluesky-feed-builder-graze-raises-1m-rolls-out-ads\/","title":{"rendered":"Bluesky feed builder Graze raises $1M, rolls out ads"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Graze<\/a>, a startup that lets people build and monetize custom feeds for Bluesky\u2019s social network, has attracted new capital. Pre-seed investors, led by Betaworks and Salesforce Ventures, have invested $1 million in the company\u2019s small team, which is working to give users control over their algorithms and social media<\/a> experiences.<\/p>\n

Graze\u2019s software, available via the web, offers tools to build, customize, publish, and manage Bluesky feeds. Unlike on other social networks like X or Meta\u2019s Threads, where users are defaulted into a main algorithmic feed every time they open the app<\/a>, Bluesky\u2019s growing social network of nearly 35 million users<\/a> allows anyone to create and follow custom feeds, pin them to the app\u2019s navigation, and make any one of them their preferred home feed. <\/p>\n

However, feed creation can be a complicated process for non-developers. <\/p>\n

That inspired the team at Graze to create software that lets people more easily build custom feeds using templates and other tools for managing their feeds\u2019 moderation, their logic and filters, sort order, and the social graph a feed contains. <\/p>\n

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Image Credits:<\/strong>Graze<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Today, Graze powers 4,500 Bluesky feeds created by around 3,000 users. This includes several top feeds on Bluesky\u2019s social network, like the News feed<\/a>, the Booksky feed, and others across a range of topics like gaming, art, politics, sports, fitness, hobbies, and more. It also powers the news<\/a> tracking service Sill<\/a> and feeds in other apps outside of Bluesky. <\/p>\n

Now, Graze is taking the next step beyond feed creation and management by allowing creators to monetize their feeds via advertising. <\/p>\n

The approach here is to establish a more ethical framework for advertising compared with the ad tech systems that big tech companies use today. That is, instead of collecting user data for ad targeting purposes, advertisers on Graze select the feeds where they want their ads to appear. The feed\u2019s topic gives them an idea about the demographic they\u2019d reach, and the feed operators get to choose which ads appear in their feeds, how often, and at what cost to advertisers.<\/p>\n

This setup also gives advertisers more power, Graze\u2019s founders believe.<\/p>\n

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In a traditional advertising environment, a social network like Facebook or X decides whose attention you are purchasing, said Graze co-founder and CTO Devin Gaffney.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdvertisers have very little control over where their content is seen and the quality of how that is rendered to people,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don\u2019t have any real relationship with the audience. And the decision as to how [the ad] gets shown to people is systematically against their favor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, users on traditional big tech platforms don\u2019t have any way to opt out of seeing ads. <\/p>\n

Graze lets feed operators choose whether they want to run ads and gives them editorial control over what\u2019s being sponsored. It also lets a feed\u2019s users opt out of ads by blocking sponsored hashtags.<\/p>\n

The team points out that feed operators are incentivized to let things get to that point of having users block ads or leave the feed by not overrunning their feeds with ads in the first place. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a self-regulatory aspect that is not present in other platforms that will make operators behave in a much more pro-social way,\u201d Gaffney said.<\/p>\n

Currently, 200 feeds built with Graze are running ads at a cost of around $1 per 1,000 impressions. But the team expects that number to grow as Bluesky itself scales. Graze takes a 30% cut of the ad dollars, which allows the company to handle not only the hosting and payment processing, but also the software for feed creation and management, including for feeds that don\u2019t monetize.<\/p>\n

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Screenshot<\/span>Image Credits:<\/strong>Graze<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Further down the road, the team is considering doing a revenue share with Bluesky and other apps built on its underlying technology<\/a>, the AT Protocol (ATProto). Today, Graze is working with other Bluesky ATProto-based apps, including photo and video apps like Skylight<\/a>, Spark<\/a>, and Flashes<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very interested in figuring out what is the ethical revenue sharing model that helps everyone involved in the picture, including app developers,\u201d said Graze co-founder and CEO Peat Bakke.<\/p>\n

Graze\u2019s pre-seed round of $1 million was led by Betaworks and Salesforce Ventures, with additional funding from Factorial, Apertu Capital, Skyseed, and angel investors from Mozilla and Protocol Labs. The funds will give Graze time to find product-market fit, the team told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, we are not focused on revenue \u2014 I mean, we already have revenue,\u201d Bakke said. \u201cWe\u2019re focused on discovery, learning \u2026 how do we make this a great experience for everyone, and build relationships in the space?\u201d <\/p>\n

In addition to Portland-based Gaffney and Bakke, Graze\u2019s third co-founder, Andrew Lisowski, who built the front end, is based in San Jose. A small handful of part-time employees also help with coding, communication, documentation, and community management.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Graze, a startup that lets people build and monetize custom feeds for Bluesky\u2019s social network, has attracted new capital. Pre-seed investors, led by Betaworks and Salesforce Ventures, have invested $1 million in the company\u2019s small team, which is working to give users control over their algorithms and social media experiences. Graze\u2019s software, available via the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":663121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/bluesky-GettyImages-2185142051.jpg?resize=1200,800","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[70784,151568,31059],"class_list":["post-663120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-advertising","tag-bluesky","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}