I'm going to put it out there..... if I had a trillion dollar company or whatever facebook is, then I think I would have done a better job getting Threads built.
And now its built, I'd have done a better job advertising and marketing it.
Let me ask you - when the latest Mission Impossible movie came out, when the latest Spiderman movie came out, did you see ads absolutely fucking everywhere? Yes you did - bus stops, TV, YouTube - everywhere you turned, that message was being sold to you. When the latest Apple phone came out, were you even able to escape the Apple advertising on radio, TV, YouTube, magazines, whatever? No, you were not able to escape.
Let me ask you - how many slick, stylish, compelling ads have you seen for Threads? Is the answer "absolutely everywhere", or is the answer "nowhere, never, none"? Or is the answer "damn facebook is pushing Threads down my throat".
The incompetence firstly of the technical build then secondly of the marketing is startling.
The conclusion has to be either facebook genuinely doesn't care about Threads, it's just a distraction from trying to make the metaverse, OR they genuinely care but they genuinely have no idea what they are doing, despite having all the money in the world.
I say I'd be better at making Threads than Zuckerberg because almost anyone would be better - for gods sake all you need to do is picj up the phone to the top ad agencies and tell them to pitch for a $500M adverting spend. It's not rocket science.
How the heck did Zuckerberg completely MISS the utter total 100% importance of the user handle in trying to lift Twitter's user base from Musk?
Let me tell you this - Twitter users ARE their handles - handles matter.
But in Zuckerbergs's world, to join Threads, you have to get an Instagram account - and apart from all the handles already being gone there, you certainly can't get your Twitter handle on threads.
People love to get a good handle - it's a personalised number plate. So Threads should have played on this - people who are engaging, posting, building audience on Threads, well they get their choice of handle.
There should have been the biggest handle rush of all time - in return for usage and engagement. Instead - Threads got the opposite - no good handles available at all, disincentive to join. Ugh.
Why - why does Threads use Instagram for its user management system? That's a mistake that has to be fixed pronto.
If I was running that project I would have said you get to have the same Threads handle as your Twitter handle if you can prove you own it by posting a code to Twitter. Of course Musk would do his best to make that not possible, but playing that game is part of the publicity of getting people to move over. Coming up with encrypted codes, obfuscated codes to prove your identity. The newspapers would write about it, you could build talk about Threads, build the perception that there was a real movement towards Threads. But did facebook do anything like that? No, they just dumped you in the Instagram user account system and said "no good handle for you". Really, whoever it is at facebook running the Threads project lacks the imagination to be taking on the job of stealing Twitter from Musk.
Armchair internet neckbeard thinks he knows Social Networks better than Zuck; who literally has half the world using his products... lol
They're obviously not advertising it due to the product being close to complete... it doesn't even have search or trending yet... Why waste money on advertising if the product isn't even done yet?
I've also never seen ads for Twitter, Facebook (before the scandals), MySpace, Reddit, etc. I think comparison to movies or Apple products is a false equivalence. Not a marketing expert, but for social media products it may be better to try to grow semi-organically?
I learned about the existence of The Peripheral TV show from a bus. I read the book a few years back and very much enjoyed it, and was surprised to see they'd made a TV show out of it - I thought there would have been other Gibson works ahead of it.
What I imagined after reading this was everyone is so demoralized at Facebook, but perhaps specifically this team.
I'd have to ask colleagues that joined Meta, but I'm imagining a team that's totally checked out. You know, you like/need the $$$ you get biweekly, but your hearts not in it, so you show up everyday going through the motions and just keep pushing that boulder up the hill. Meta doesn't have the greatest reputation, and then on top of that your working on Mark Zuckerberg's spite social media project...
Monthly active users (MAU) is a key performance indicator (KPI) used by social networking and other companies to count the number of unique users who have visited a site within the past month [1].
There is no distinction of intention in this metric.
yeah, this number has to be unreal.
every time I go in and check it out it’s like a handful of content farms, and two to three real users (one of which works at Instagram)
Yep. Instagram shoves Threads excerpts into my feed at regular intervals. I’m pretty sure I don’t have a Threads account, whatever that means. I at the very least don’t have an ICQ-esque number my name on my Instagram profile. I’m being explicit here to preempt someone well-actuallying me about a shared accounts database or something.
Anyways, at which point am I considered a Threads user? If I stop scrolling to show my partner how absurd it is that they’re doing this? When I accidentally press in that item in my feed?
My normal Instagram feed is at least 25% screenshots of Tweets anyway, and the Thread advertisement interstitial gives you the impression that you can press to “view more” of whatever recycled thing is in the Threads post they’ve decided to shove in your face. So it could very well just be 100M people that pressed “See more”, and that’s one of the more generous explanations.
I mostly gave up all social media with the advent of threads and now only look at hacker news. It just seems like there's too much stuff being presented as interesting information that's not really at all. HN seems to at least have things I find truly interesting approximately daily.
As someone "extremely online" I find that Reddit, Threads, Twitter all post a lot of regurgitated or previously posted information. It's nice the HN prefers calling that out, either w/ a "previous discussion:" comment, or pointing out the year, i.e (2018) in the title.
It may pick up when EU join? I think there's room for a better, less toxic twitter. Seriously, 15 min on Twitter really drags my morale down. So much negativity and hate. There are people who are interesting to follow but they are buried in an ocean of garbage. I don't know how otherwise smart people would spend so much that on that platform. My hope is that threads manage to provide a better culture, if it's even possible with this format. I like what HN has achieved in terms of moderation. I wonder if this could be replicated at Twitter scale, probably at the price of banning certain topics.
I think Twitter's new limitation to showing just the tweet itself was a great update. I don't have an account, so any time I follow a Twitter link I see only the relevant bit and none of the comments which basically never were worth reading anyway.
I think they need to get Threads out to the EU before Bluesky opens up to the public since Bluesky is so similar to Twitter of yore that it'll definitely be attractive to European Twitter users. Not sure what the timeline for Bluesky opening up is though. Last I heard, they needed to make architectural changes to allow scaling before they could get rid of the invites, and the ETA for those were end of this year.
Threads isn't launched in EU possibly because it's spyware and not compliant with GDPR.
Coming from Meta, and given Facebook, their main product, why would you think it can develop a better culture?
On Twitter/X, the reality is that people get the kind of posts they tend to interact with. The "For You" page can be curated, however. My X/Twitter feed right now has no mentions of war, or politics. It's all tech. Whenever I engage with tweets, I end up seeing similar tweets on the "For You" page, that I am then careful about curating.
The automated feed is now a feature of all social media, except for the Fediverse/Mastodon. I don't like it, because the algorithm is meant to maximize engagement whatever the cost. But have you seen Facebook's feed lately? It's much, much worse than Twitter, because on Facebook, whatever you do, you can't stop it from suggesting bullshit, drama and yellow journalism.
BTW, Mastodon is nice. But even without the algorithmic feed, people tend to gravitate toward drama and shallow subjects, such as politics and religion. Some people like complaining about shallow subjects into the void, or to pick a fight with strangers.
Instagram, being based on posts of images only, seemed to be different. Well, not anymore, right?
Goes to show you that a simple UX is really all you need for this type of thing if you have a lot of users. To me instagram was already better then twitter, so now I have twitter without twitter.
I tried it, but the only way I found to find people in my field was to follow a username that had the name in the title and then follow the followers. By that point I was pretty bored of talking into the gloom. I should give it one last check to see if it’s easier to connect with people.
This time it s going to be different. Do people really want another twitter? aren't they tired enough of the shouting? From here on it's going to be the various federated media, and it will be a lot more quiet
I don't think another Twitter can happen. That ship has sailed. Bluesky is trying its best to be "another Twitter" but its invite-only approach severely hampers its ability to fill that niche and even if it didn't have that, it isn't easy to build back what Twitter lost.
Arguably even Twitter was no longer Twitter, even prior to the acquisition talks. Twitter was as much the place you would go to to get citizen journalism when big tragedies broke as it was the place you'd hear endless outrage over a person you never heard of before having done something inconsequential that everyone agreed was significant enough to try and end their career over. By the end, a common refrain was the hope never to become the "main character" because everyone's history had some rope to hang them by if presented in the most outraged and uncharitable way. But on the other hand it was also a way to be heard, a place to motivate millions for activism (as long as it didn't take any real risk or effort and could be tweeted about throughout) and to do viral marketing.
It feels like that has been replaced with niches and auto-curation either presenting userbases of similar sites with disjointed siloed experiences or with a homogeneous repetitive timeline of what advertisers might like or what Elon Musk personally wants you to see (which seems to be mostly his own posts).
Twitter feels like for a while it was the closest approximation to the "global town square" or the mythical "marketplace of ideas" but in all truth that didn't last long and once marketing departments, advertising agencies, internet trolls and state actors had caught on and mastered the new medium, it was already dead.
I have an instagram account, somehow... I almost never use it. Does this include me in that count if I use it to view some link that ends on Instagram?
Twitter, on the other hand, is one of my regular hang-outs.
For less than a year of after launch, that is a better result than Mastodon with 7 years with 1.7M MAUs and for the rest of the other so-called Twitter / X killers which one of them (T2) already gave up and killed themselves recently. [0]
I'd expect, Hive, Substack Notes, Post.news, etc to follow suit.
i don't even know the url of the website and have yet to notice a link on HN pointing to Threads. I don't know if the url is being filtered out on HN or there just isn't any interesting content there worth posting here.
[+] [-] andrewstuart|2 years ago|reply
And now its built, I'd have done a better job advertising and marketing it.
Let me ask you - when the latest Mission Impossible movie came out, when the latest Spiderman movie came out, did you see ads absolutely fucking everywhere? Yes you did - bus stops, TV, YouTube - everywhere you turned, that message was being sold to you. When the latest Apple phone came out, were you even able to escape the Apple advertising on radio, TV, YouTube, magazines, whatever? No, you were not able to escape.
Let me ask you - how many slick, stylish, compelling ads have you seen for Threads? Is the answer "absolutely everywhere", or is the answer "nowhere, never, none"? Or is the answer "damn facebook is pushing Threads down my throat".
The incompetence firstly of the technical build then secondly of the marketing is startling.
The conclusion has to be either facebook genuinely doesn't care about Threads, it's just a distraction from trying to make the metaverse, OR they genuinely care but they genuinely have no idea what they are doing, despite having all the money in the world.
I say I'd be better at making Threads than Zuckerberg because almost anyone would be better - for gods sake all you need to do is picj up the phone to the top ad agencies and tell them to pitch for a $500M adverting spend. It's not rocket science.
[+] [-] andrewstuart|2 years ago|reply
How the heck did Zuckerberg completely MISS the utter total 100% importance of the user handle in trying to lift Twitter's user base from Musk?
Let me tell you this - Twitter users ARE their handles - handles matter.
But in Zuckerbergs's world, to join Threads, you have to get an Instagram account - and apart from all the handles already being gone there, you certainly can't get your Twitter handle on threads.
People love to get a good handle - it's a personalised number plate. So Threads should have played on this - people who are engaging, posting, building audience on Threads, well they get their choice of handle.
There should have been the biggest handle rush of all time - in return for usage and engagement. Instead - Threads got the opposite - no good handles available at all, disincentive to join. Ugh.
Why - why does Threads use Instagram for its user management system? That's a mistake that has to be fixed pronto.
If I was running that project I would have said you get to have the same Threads handle as your Twitter handle if you can prove you own it by posting a code to Twitter. Of course Musk would do his best to make that not possible, but playing that game is part of the publicity of getting people to move over. Coming up with encrypted codes, obfuscated codes to prove your identity. The newspapers would write about it, you could build talk about Threads, build the perception that there was a real movement towards Threads. But did facebook do anything like that? No, they just dumped you in the Instagram user account system and said "no good handle for you". Really, whoever it is at facebook running the Threads project lacks the imagination to be taking on the job of stealing Twitter from Musk.
[+] [-] rapsin4|2 years ago|reply
They're obviously not advertising it due to the product being close to complete... it doesn't even have search or trending yet... Why waste money on advertising if the product isn't even done yet?
[+] [-] helsinkiandrew|2 years ago|reply
What about the 2.3 billion Instagram users who get reminded about it every so often?
[+] [-] yellow_lead|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BLKNSLVR|2 years ago|reply
Great first season.
Cancelled.
[+] [-] munro|2 years ago|reply
I'd have to ask colleagues that joined Meta, but I'm imagining a team that's totally checked out. You know, you like/need the $$$ you get biweekly, but your hearts not in it, so you show up everyday going through the motions and just keep pushing that boulder up the hill. Meta doesn't have the greatest reputation, and then on top of that your working on Mark Zuckerberg's spite social media project...
[+] [-] harrid|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laurentlb|2 years ago|reply
Right now, it seems to be blocked in half of the countries in the world. This probably affects the network effects.
[+] [-] wink|2 years ago|reply
Bluesky is mentioned a gazillion times more, and even that not very often.
[+] [-] monkey_monkey|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zenmaster10665|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skilled|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yellow_lead|2 years ago|reply
There is no distinction of intention in this metric.
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/monthly-active-user-mau...
[+] [-] benguild|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raverbashing|2 years ago|reply
Note who shares Threads screenshots: either the person itself or it's a dunk on how threads is boring/meaningless
Zuck created the AOL of short messages, it's as if the bluechecks on twitter got 10x more views than on Twitter itself
[+] [-] hef19898|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fredoliveira|2 years ago|reply
Source?
[+] [-] 3c6bYDXLMj|2 years ago|reply
Anyways, at which point am I considered a Threads user? If I stop scrolling to show my partner how absurd it is that they’re doing this? When I accidentally press in that item in my feed?
My normal Instagram feed is at least 25% screenshots of Tweets anyway, and the Thread advertisement interstitial gives you the impression that you can press to “view more” of whatever recycled thing is in the Threads post they’ve decided to shove in your face. So it could very well just be 100M people that pressed “See more”, and that’s one of the more generous explanations.
[+] [-] mnky9800n|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yellow_lead|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naillo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daverep|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yodsanklai|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] distances|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hamuko|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bad_user|2 years ago|reply
Coming from Meta, and given Facebook, their main product, why would you think it can develop a better culture?
On Twitter/X, the reality is that people get the kind of posts they tend to interact with. The "For You" page can be curated, however. My X/Twitter feed right now has no mentions of war, or politics. It's all tech. Whenever I engage with tweets, I end up seeing similar tweets on the "For You" page, that I am then careful about curating.
The automated feed is now a feature of all social media, except for the Fediverse/Mastodon. I don't like it, because the algorithm is meant to maximize engagement whatever the cost. But have you seen Facebook's feed lately? It's much, much worse than Twitter, because on Facebook, whatever you do, you can't stop it from suggesting bullshit, drama and yellow journalism.
BTW, Mastodon is nice. But even without the algorithmic feed, people tend to gravitate toward drama and shallow subjects, such as politics and religion. Some people like complaining about shallow subjects into the void, or to pick a fight with strangers.
Instagram, being based on posts of images only, seemed to be different. Well, not anymore, right?
[+] [-] test77777|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gareth_untether|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seydor|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnbad|2 years ago|reply
Arguably even Twitter was no longer Twitter, even prior to the acquisition talks. Twitter was as much the place you would go to to get citizen journalism when big tragedies broke as it was the place you'd hear endless outrage over a person you never heard of before having done something inconsequential that everyone agreed was significant enough to try and end their career over. By the end, a common refrain was the hope never to become the "main character" because everyone's history had some rope to hang them by if presented in the most outraged and uncharitable way. But on the other hand it was also a way to be heard, a place to motivate millions for activism (as long as it didn't take any real risk or effort and could be tweeted about throughout) and to do viral marketing.
It feels like that has been replaced with niches and auto-curation either presenting userbases of similar sites with disjointed siloed experiences or with a homogeneous repetitive timeline of what advertisers might like or what Elon Musk personally wants you to see (which seems to be mostly his own posts).
Twitter feels like for a while it was the closest approximation to the "global town square" or the mythical "marketplace of ideas" but in all truth that didn't last long and once marketing departments, advertising agencies, internet trolls and state actors had caught on and mastered the new medium, it was already dead.
[+] [-] mikewarot|2 years ago|reply
Twitter, on the other hand, is one of my regular hang-outs.
[+] [-] rvz|2 years ago|reply
I'd expect, Hive, Substack Notes, Post.news, etc to follow suit.
[0] https://pebble.is/gabor/status/340649
[+] [-] throwaway2990|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] will5421|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TowerTall|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unicornmama|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mentos|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] egosinenomine|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]