If Bruinsky’s social media dream doesn’t surface, the company will have a reliable backup business. The decentralized network is selling T-shirt kills with subtle Latin digging, a message differentiating from Bluesky’s goal of being a billionaire’s unfavorable alternative, which is differentiating from the goals of Meta and Elon Musk’s X.
The oversized t-shirt is a carbon copy of the shirt worn by Jay Graber, CEO of Blues at the Austin SXSW earlier this month. Decorated with the Latin phrase “Mundus Sin Caesaribus”, which translates to “the world without Caesars”, they show the same font and color as the other top font and color that Zuckerberg wore in Meta Connect during Meta Connect last September.
Meta's CEO's shirt says “Aut Zuck Aut Nihil” or “Zuck or Nothing”, which is the saying “Caesar or nothing”. Zuckerberg has long been fascinated by the Roman emperor and particularly interested in Augustus Caesar, who praised him for building 200 years of world peace through a “very demanding approach” in his 2018 profile. His passion for ancient Rome even expanded to the names of his three daughters, Maxima, August and Aurelia, who all had Latin nicknames.
Among the Blues users, Graber's Diss in the meta-head clearly resonates. They sold out in just 30 minutes after the company released a batch of T-shirts for sale on March 13. The Blues brought their shirt back earlier this week, with a limited 7-day size of XXL.
The company said the profit price is $40, which will allow Bluesky to open network building. However, those who don't want to go out for a T-shirt can also buy copies that pop up in retailers such as Etsy (Etsy), Walmart (WMT), and eBay (eBay).
How does the Blues make money?
On the first day of restocking on March 18, the Blues “had more money today than it has been in the past two years in the sales of customization sectors”, the company’s chief operating officer Rose Wang said. “That's it. Spin to a T-shirt company,” Wang joked.
While Bluesky has managed to avoid advertising so far, the company’s business model does include offering services like Custom Domains – in 2023, it begins offering users the opportunity to easily set up unique domain names that can be linked to their Bluesky account. The nascent platform was originally incubated by Twitter in 2019 in 2019 before it founded an independent company and is currently exploring the subscription model.
Bluesky has grown rapidly in recent months, partly due to strong opposition to billionaire-owned platforms such as X (formerly known as Twitter), which was acquired by Elon Musk in 2022 for $44 billion. Bruinsky claims that its open source structure will allegedly protect it from similar acquisitions, as users can leave the platform behind data or create new networks if they are not satisfied with their direction.
Speaking on SXSW on March 10, Graber said: “If a billionaire comes in and buys Bruinsky and takes over it, or I decide tomorrow to change things in ways people really don’t like. [them]. ”
