Graze, a startup that allows people to build and make custom money for Bluesky’s social network, has attracted new capital. Investors pre-what, led by BetaWorks and Salesforce Ventures, have invested $ 1 million in the company’s small company, which is working to give users to control their algorithms and social media experiences.
Graze’s software, available through the web, offers tools to build, personalize, publish and manage Bluesky resources. Unlike other social networks such as X or Meta’s Threads, where users are predetermined in a major algorithm food whenever they open the application, the growing social network of approximately 35 million users allows anyone to create and follow custom resources, place them in app navigating and making their favorite food in the house.
However, food creation can be a complicated process for non-developers.
This inspired the team in Grase to create software that allows people to more easily build custom resources using templates and other tools for managing their moderation of feeds, logic and filters, ordering and social graph containing a food.
Today, Graze empowers 4500 Bluesky resources created by about 3,000 users. This includes some major sources on Bluesky’s social network, such as News Feed, The Bookky Feed, and others in a range of topics such as games, art, politics, sports, fitness, hobbies, and more. It also strengthens the news tracking service and feeds on other applications outside Bluesky.
Now, Graze is taking the next step beyond the creation and management of food allowing the creators to make money from their resources through advertising.
Access here is to create a more ethical advertising framework compared to advertising technology systems used by large technology companies today. That is to say, instead of collecting user data for advertising target purposes, advertisers in Grase choose the resources where they want their ads to appear. The theme of the food gives them an idea of the demographics they would reach, and the food operators have to choose which ads appear in their resources, how often, and at what costs for advertisers.
This configuration also gives advertisers more power, believe the founders of Graze.
In a traditional advertising setting, a social network like Facebook or X decides whose attention you are buying, said Graze and Cto Devin Gaffney co -founder.
“Advertisers have little control over the place where their content is seen and the quality of how people are given,” he said. “They don’t have any real relationship with the audience. And the decision on how (advertising) is told to people is systematically against their favor.”
Meanwhile, users on traditional large technology platforms have no way of giving up to see ads.
Graze allows food operators to choose if they want to run ads and gives them editorial control over what is sponsored. It also allows users of a food to give up advertising by blocking sponsored hashtags.
The team shows that food operators are stimulated to let things get to that user point for users to block ads or leave food by not exceeding their resources with advertising in the first place.
“There is a self-regulating aspect that is not present on other platforms that will make operators behave in a much more pro-social way,” Gaffney said.
Currently, 200 sources built of grazing are running ads at a cost of about $ 1 per 1,000 impressions. But the team expects that number to grow as Bluesky himself. Graze receives a 30% cut of advertising dollars, which allows the company to handle not only waiting and payment processing, but also the software for food creation and management, including for resources that do not make money.
Further on the road, the team is thinking of making some of the income with Bluesky and other applications built on its basic technology, Atproto. Today, Graze is working with other Bluesky Atproto -based applications, including photo and video applications such as Skylight, Spark and Flashes.
“We are very interested in understanding what is the model of ethical income sharing that helps everyone involved in the photos, including app developers,” said Graze and CEO Peat Bakke co -founder.
The predetermined Graza round of $ 1 million was led by Betaworks and Salesforce Ventures, with additional funding from the factor, Apertu Capital, Skyseed and Angels Investors from Mozilla and Labs Protocol. Funds will give time to find the product of the suitable product, the team Techcrunch told.
“For now, we’re not focused on income – I mean, we already have revenue,” Bakke said. “We are focused on discovering, learning … How to make this an excellent experience for everyone, and create space relationships?”
In addition to Portland -based Gaffney and Bakke, Graze’s third co -founder Andrew Lisowski, who built the front, is based in San Jose. A small part of part -time employees also help coding, communication, documentation and community management.
