This isn't a critique of Threads, this a commentary on the nature of social graphs and different identities in different spaces. People use IG different than they use Twitter, FB, LinkedIn, etc.
You could get the same experience on Twitter by following Dora the Explorer, Procter and Gamble, your uncle, and Brian Chesky but you have chosen to have a specific experience in that app by curating your feed.
A better example, port LinkedIn's graph to Snapchat and it would seem like absolute nonsense.
IG ported a visual social graph to a text based app, this, by definition, isn't going to produce the most optimal experience. Thats 100% fine though, you'll realize who is good at posting text content, follow them, you'll unfollow the people that are not good, etc.
This is why TikTok was interesting in the first place because it removed the curation step and created an interest graph instead of a social one. What the poster is talking about is the friction inheirent to using a social graph as a proxy for an interest graph.
"I love when you talk about tech but I don't care at all about your dog."
I get this a lot on Twitter. There is a very interesting tech account that I follow that half the time is complaining about British politics. It's really frustrating, since I don't want to ditch the tech posts
There's the similar but related problem of "I'm more interested in creative posts today, but there's no way for me to register that intent". So what ends up happening on sites like TikTok is that you have to start very quickly swiping through your feed until something related pops up, and pausing for too long will undo your progress.
I agree, but it allowed meta to say they had a bajillion users from day one, and make the news. Nothing worse than an empty social network to make people run away.
The way I used twitter (and now threads) is just by navigating directly to the URL of the accounts I want to read. I'd discover other accounts I'd want to "follow" usually via re-tweets.
In this way Threads is going to be the exact same experience for me as long as the same accounts I read on Twitter are posting on Threads.
I think that threads is gonna be more successful than people realize. bluesky and mastodon are both still just novelties because it's neigh impossible to migrate social media audiences. Even if Oprah has a mastodon that's not really gonna do much of the platform is fragmented and empty.
Personally, I am enjoying using threads. Insta has been my only real social media presence for a while now and there are people in my feed already posting entertaining stuff. It means threads gets a huge headstart.
In addition to this, Meta dwarfs Twitter as an organization both in numbers and technical talent, especially after Musk's immature firing spree. I don't think any emergency service accounts will be getting rate limited on their threads account.
Meta smells blood in the water and is doing what any good mega corporation does and capitalizing on it.
Once people realize that they just need to go follow their Twitter follows on Threads (instead of just their insta followers), Threads starts feeling like a way cleaner version of Twitter. And that's before they add most of the features like hashtags, trending, follow topics, DMs, etc.
I thought I would get burned out on Threads but it's still keeping my interest.
I think you are completely wrong and in a few days Threads will be forgotten just like Vision Pro was. Hard to take opinion’s seriously when they’ve been clearly influenced by the media machine.
Nobody is going to give up their real estate on Twitter just because Instagram added a “create a text-based Insta account” button.
"In addition, having real identity as a feature could enable building more trustworthy communities that could go beyond online discussions.."
No. It's just not safe to provide your real identity on the internet except in narrow situations (such as friends and family or businesses you are buying goods and services from). Problems arise with employers, crazies, law enforcement... The last situation I was just reading about was: "Reddit Asks Court to Protect Users Right to Anonymous Speech in Piracy Case"
> 100M signups in five days is impressive at first glance. However, if you do some quick math, you will see that 100M signups (defined by install the app + click a button that says signup with your Instagram account) out of 3.8 billion monthly active Meta users is 3% of their users, i.e. 3 out of 100 Meta users did a low effort action (one-click signup) in the midst of a huge product news cycle.
Threads isn't available in Europe (~500M population), Meta MAU != Instagram MAU, and 5 days isn't 30 days.
I'm a meta user and can't login because I don't have an instagram account. I wouldn't hate checking out threads but I can't really be bothered to download another app, sign up, then go to this app, and login. Seems like a waste.
I'm sure meta knows how to make a social product successful, the "everything for everyone" approach has earned them billions of dollars in revenue over twenty years now.
That only worked after they started off being exclusively a social network on college campuses. To the author's point, Threads needs to find a "subset of users [that] love and repeatedly [use Threads]".
Once they find Thread's specific purpose, then they can start to cater that to a broader audience and find true success, imo.
They're very familiar with TikTok and how many people are moving over to use that. Their bet is that they can figure out how to highlight the most interesting content for each user and that content would be better than the vast majority of user curation through follows.
Given what Meta has done to Instagram, and hell, for that matter Facebook*, why would I even take a look at "Threads".
Blog people. Blog.
* with its ridiculously overloaded stream of sponsored content and quasi-pornographic Reels (which would get blocked if I posted it to my timeline but seems to be just fine on their compete-with-TikTok Reels platform. It's not that I object to pornographic or quasi-pornographic content. It's that I object to it being shoved into my feed when I'm looking at photos of my friends beach vacation, or pictures of nephews and nieces, right? Stay in your goddam lane Facebook.
Because you, me, and Mr McGee read blogs. Meanwhile a billion other people thumb through bite size 'info-oids' at levels of ADHD never before seen and don't put up enough objection to the half nude crap to make a difference.
Threads will be good for brands since they won't have to worry about controversial content, though eventually everything is going to be bland content if you are being censored to what Meta thinks is "appropriate". Though could be interesting if they pivot towards a more topics/community model.
Why is any content that wouldn't be censored considered "bland"? How much of the HN top page at any given time would be considered 'inappropriate' by meta and censored? Is the content on HN bland?
What kind of content are people looking for that they can't find on a Meta-filtered feed? Pretty sure I'll get to see all my finance, programming and shitposting content I get on Twitter in there, what am I missing out on?
I actually think Twitter is pretty bland because it's a lot of old topics being rehashed with no new information: vaccines, gender identity, and the culture wars. The only reason people are talking about these things is because of Elon. There is no current event that precipitated them.
TikTok is everything for literally everyone. And its done well because their algorithm feels like magic. There is no problem with that approach if its done well. Still to early to rate the Threads algorithm
Everyone should listen to the Reply All episode about the TikTok algorithm, its pretty mind blowing
Twitter already tried communities, and it didn’t work out too well. The problem is it doesn’t work with tweets, as in tweets are too separate.
Fb is either gonna pivot into full Reddit or they need to invent some hybrid thing that won’t be a Twitter competitor anymore. They will likely find out why Twitter had difficulty in getting more users to use it
Exactly. The fastest growing social network and product adoption in history. With 100M users in 5 days. Already destroyed OpenAI's record and eclipsing the so-called 'Fediverse' 10 times over. At this point; they are the new Fediverse.
But I do remember many hysterical comments about 'Meta is dying' and the regular 'Instagram algorithm bad' complaining and finally the insane calls to 'Fire Mark Zuckerberg' nonsense here.
Now this should definitively prove which I have already said before, that the poorly aged and the constant calls and deranged predictions of the death of Meta Platforms, has been greatly exaggerated.
A magnificent and successful recovery with the stock up over 200% since the low of $89.
Alot of nothing in this post. Or alot of nothing that hasn't already been said in the last week.
If you think twitter is only text based where have you been for like 10 years.
The real problem right now is threads has weak discoverability, terrible algorithm modding (like, telling it what you want to see and not....how do you get rid of accounts, mute? hide?), and lack of quality content that can't already be found elsewhere. It's just an alsoran. DOA after people stop signing up to it out of curiosity.
> 100M signups in five days is impressive at first glance. However, if you do some quick math, you will see that 100M signups (defined by install the app + click a button that says signup with your Instagram account) out of 3.8 billion monthly active Meta users is 3% of their users.
Some better math is 100M out of the 750M or so active monthly users of Instagram outside the EU ~13%
Although many of those will have signed up to see what’s going on and won’t turn into DAU and MAU
"100M signups in five days is impressive at first glance. However, if you do some quick math, you will see that 100M signups (defined by install the app + click a button that says signup with your Instagram account) out of 3.8 billion monthly active Meta users is 3% of their users"
Speaking of math, MAU means active at least once per month, which can be as meaningless as being triggered by a notification. Also, a month is longer than a week.
The 3% signup percentage is nonsense because only 1/4th of a month has passed. Even after a full month it's a guessed number because you have to know how often the "sign up" banner was served (and seen) to actually active users.
Calling a 1 million new users PER HOUR "not a slam dunk".
Hasn’t Twitter moved on to becoming the everything app like WeChat for video like YouTube?
Does Threads have to compete with Twitter for users or advertisers? I think people want to promote their YouTube channel and Threads has a lot of first-party tracking data.
My take on these entertaining social network breakdown times is this: Twitter refugees, in particular the power users, cannot succeed anywhere else. Their inflated status is bound to Twitter and Twitter only.
On Threads, they drown in cheap largely non-political entertainment, memes, fashion, influencer-style Insta content. Meta even openly stated this to be the goal: fun over news/politics.
Mastodon is too small, fractured and dysfunctional for Twitter power users. There's no cultural significance as it's a network of misfits with no mainstream reach.
The biggest mistake of Threads was allowing videos and photos from day one. It became a dumpster of Instagram reposts, almost no new content. And the feed algorithm is very, very bad.
Threads doesn't strike me as a Twitter killer. It sounds like it's aiming to be an app based entirely around "The Dodo" level content. I wouldn't worry too much if I was Musk, but if I was the CEO of Pinterest then I'd be shitting my pants.
There doesn’t need to be another Twitter killer. Elon Musk did that already by firing 80% of the staff. Every time Twitter goes down a few more people will go to Threads.
Twitter has the same "problem" but has been wildly successful... The odd thing about twitter is that nobody could ever figure out what is really was. Still haven't.
Not directly related but… Twitter is really so bad lately
Musk has not just tipped his fingers in the politics; he just went full-on hard right; it resembles 4chan now more than anything
while the site itself just plainly doesn’t work anymore, and things now randomly fail
4chan is fine for what it is; but there is a reason why you have just scammy porn and NFT ads on 4chan
on the other hand I now tried Trump’s Pravda [1], it seems it works fine, but all the ads there are for some scammy “patriotic” insurance companies. It’s a direction to go, just maybe not worth the 44 billion.
[+] [-] motoxpro|2 years ago|reply
You could get the same experience on Twitter by following Dora the Explorer, Procter and Gamble, your uncle, and Brian Chesky but you have chosen to have a specific experience in that app by curating your feed.
A better example, port LinkedIn's graph to Snapchat and it would seem like absolute nonsense.
IG ported a visual social graph to a text based app, this, by definition, isn't going to produce the most optimal experience. Thats 100% fine though, you'll realize who is good at posting text content, follow them, you'll unfollow the people that are not good, etc.
This is why TikTok was interesting in the first place because it removed the curation step and created an interest graph instead of a social one. What the poster is talking about is the friction inheirent to using a social graph as a proxy for an interest graph.
"I love when you talk about tech but I don't care at all about your dog."
[+] [-] haolez|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phailhaus|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weebull|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coolbreezetft22|2 years ago|reply
In this way Threads is going to be the exact same experience for me as long as the same accounts I read on Twitter are posting on Threads.
[+] [-] nbow|2 years ago|reply
Personally, I am enjoying using threads. Insta has been my only real social media presence for a while now and there are people in my feed already posting entertaining stuff. It means threads gets a huge headstart.
In addition to this, Meta dwarfs Twitter as an organization both in numbers and technical talent, especially after Musk's immature firing spree. I don't think any emergency service accounts will be getting rate limited on their threads account.
Meta smells blood in the water and is doing what any good mega corporation does and capitalizing on it.
[+] [-] boc|2 years ago|reply
I thought I would get burned out on Threads but it's still keeping my interest.
[+] [-] skilled|2 years ago|reply
Nobody is going to give up their real estate on Twitter just because Instagram added a “create a text-based Insta account” button.
Let that sink in…
[+] [-] pasttense01|2 years ago|reply
No. It's just not safe to provide your real identity on the internet except in narrow situations (such as friends and family or businesses you are buying goods and services from). Problems arise with employers, crazies, law enforcement... The last situation I was just reading about was: "Reddit Asks Court to Protect Users Right to Anonymous Speech in Piracy Case"
https://torrentfreak.com/reddit-asks-court-to-protect-users-...
[+] [-] kneebonian|2 years ago|reply
1. Never give out real personal info
2. Don't believe anything you see on the internet
3. Everyone woman on the internet is a dude and every teenager is an FBI agent.
Everything went to hell when we stopped living by those 3 rules.
[+] [-] axlee|2 years ago|reply
Threads isn't available in Europe (~500M population), Meta MAU != Instagram MAU, and 5 days isn't 30 days.
[+] [-] duped|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burnished|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jb12|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SCUSKU|2 years ago|reply
Once they find Thread's specific purpose, then they can start to cater that to a broader audience and find true success, imo.
[+] [-] viscanti|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonnycomputer|2 years ago|reply
Blog people. Blog.
* with its ridiculously overloaded stream of sponsored content and quasi-pornographic Reels (which would get blocked if I posted it to my timeline but seems to be just fine on their compete-with-TikTok Reels platform. It's not that I object to pornographic or quasi-pornographic content. It's that I object to it being shoved into my feed when I'm looking at photos of my friends beach vacation, or pictures of nephews and nieces, right? Stay in your goddam lane Facebook.
[+] [-] ezfe|2 years ago|reply
All my reels are puppies and memes so...not sure what you're doing to your Instagram
[+] [-] pixl97|2 years ago|reply
Because you, me, and Mr McGee read blogs. Meanwhile a billion other people thumb through bite size 'info-oids' at levels of ADHD never before seen and don't put up enough objection to the half nude crap to make a difference.
[+] [-] fknorangesite|2 years ago|reply
Meh you're just telling on yourself, here. Mark them as not-interested. My feed is all scale models and noodle recipes.
[+] [-] bl_valance|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coolbreezetft22|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BbzzbB|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cactusplant7374|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bugglebeetle|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] revscat|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] shmatt|2 years ago|reply
Everyone should listen to the Reply All episode about the TikTok algorithm, its pretty mind blowing
https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/z3h78d6
[+] [-] m3kw9|2 years ago|reply
Fb is either gonna pivot into full Reddit or they need to invent some hybrid thing that won’t be a Twitter competitor anymore. They will likely find out why Twitter had difficulty in getting more users to use it
[+] [-] threeseed|2 years ago|reply
100m users and fastest growing social network in history.
And that's without EU, no desktop or iPad apps and missing key features like chronological timeline.
Sure seems like it's succeeding to me.
[+] [-] rvz|2 years ago|reply
But I do remember many hysterical comments about 'Meta is dying' and the regular 'Instagram algorithm bad' complaining and finally the insane calls to 'Fire Mark Zuckerberg' nonsense here.
Now this should definitively prove which I have already said before, that the poorly aged and the constant calls and deranged predictions of the death of Meta Platforms, has been greatly exaggerated.
A magnificent and successful recovery with the stock up over 200% since the low of $89.
[+] [-] troupo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisArchitect|2 years ago|reply
If you think twitter is only text based where have you been for like 10 years.
The real problem right now is threads has weak discoverability, terrible algorithm modding (like, telling it what you want to see and not....how do you get rid of accounts, mute? hide?), and lack of quality content that can't already be found elsewhere. It's just an alsoran. DOA after people stop signing up to it out of curiosity.
[+] [-] helsinkiandrew|2 years ago|reply
Some better math is 100M out of the 750M or so active monthly users of Instagram outside the EU ~13%
Although many of those will have signed up to see what’s going on and won’t turn into DAU and MAU
[+] [-] dahwolf|2 years ago|reply
Speaking of math, MAU means active at least once per month, which can be as meaningless as being triggered by a notification. Also, a month is longer than a week.
The 3% signup percentage is nonsense because only 1/4th of a month has passed. Even after a full month it's a guessed number because you have to know how often the "sign up" banner was served (and seen) to actually active users.
Calling a 1 million new users PER HOUR "not a slam dunk".
[+] [-] kornork|2 years ago|reply
What are we expecting here? If there's a legal requirement Twitter has to follow, vs getting banned, what should they do?
Do we believe for a second that Meta/Threads will do anything differently?
[+] [-] fundad|2 years ago|reply
Does Threads have to compete with Twitter for users or advertisers? I think people want to promote their YouTube channel and Threads has a lot of first-party tracking data.
[+] [-] dmoy|2 years ago|reply
I am having difficulty parsing this. What do you mean?
[+] [-] dahwolf|2 years ago|reply
On Threads, they drown in cheap largely non-political entertainment, memes, fashion, influencer-style Insta content. Meta even openly stated this to be the goal: fun over news/politics.
Mastodon is too small, fractured and dysfunctional for Twitter power users. There's no cultural significance as it's a network of misfits with no mainstream reach.
[+] [-] leonidasv|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elforce002|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandspar|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] janalsncm|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ypeterholmes|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yankput|2 years ago|reply
Musk has not just tipped his fingers in the politics; he just went full-on hard right; it resembles 4chan now more than anything
while the site itself just plainly doesn’t work anymore, and things now randomly fail
4chan is fine for what it is; but there is a reason why you have just scammy porn and NFT ads on 4chan
on the other hand I now tried Trump’s Pravda [1], it seems it works fine, but all the ads there are for some scammy “patriotic” insurance companies. It’s a direction to go, just maybe not worth the 44 billion.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda