Bluesky CEO Jay Graber walked on stage at SXSW wearing a T-shirt that threw shade at Mark Zuckerberg and, amazingly, sales of those shirts in one day have topped the amount earned by the company’s custom domain sales in two years.
The newcomer social media company – now with more than 33 million users – sold out of the first batch and continued selling them through March 25.
Graber’s black T-shirt with black text was a lookalike for the one the Meta CEO wore onstage recently.
Zuckerberg’s tee, which he wore at an event last year, read “Aut Zuck aut nihil,” a personal rework of the Latin phrase “Aut Caesar aut nihil” that means “Either Caesar or nothing.”
Graber’s not-so-subtle tee proclaimed, “Mundus sine caesaribus,” or “a world without Caesars.”
Haters (and most likely some lovers) of the Meta (formerly Facebook) founder quickly noticed the shirts. Smartly, Bluesky jumped on the opportunity and started selling the now-sold-out oversize-fit tees for $40.
That’s it. Pivoting to a tshirt company… had more money coming in today than we did the last two years selling custom domains
— Rose ? (@rose.bsky.team) March 18, 2025 at 9:18 PM
Bluesky noted on the t-shirt product page that all proceeds benefit the AT Protocol develop ecosystem, the open network Bluesky is built on.
In late 2019, X (then Twitter) announced that it was funding a new decentralized social media project called Bluesky, which became an independent company in 2021. In February 2024, the platform opened to the public before requiring new users to be invited by others.
