Threads, an Instagram app (opens in new tab)

Facebook designers have suffered quite a bit from dealing with very inconsistent media format: comments on one photo in an album are one of the obvious ones, or a poster criticizing and sharing a video and comments assuming the author shot the video is familiar to anyone with less media-savvy friends. Limiting media forms to consistent sets makes sense to have a smoother experience.

Facebook, and later Instagram once the first one was burned, has done a lot to have a social graph that makes sense: actual people and well-established pseudonyms, famous people and brands, etc. It’s the Social part of what is known internally as “The Graph” and a very crucial asset, something that was expected to be shared across properties: Facebook and Instagram, of course (hence the horrifying confusing relation between your Facebook account with your civil name and your pseudonymous account on Instagram, outing a few people that way), but also the MetaVerse lately and yet again with some controversy. WhatsApp fought against having the Social part of the graph as a default because WA had its own graph; that was a tough battle. It’s not fully isolated: WA Shopping leverages Inventory, the Things part of the graph, massively so.

Despite all that drama, this confirms that Facebook wants to leverage its Graph further, specifically Instagram’s—likely a victory from Ad Partners who want brands to feel comfortable early and spend fast.

The spaghetti logo looks nothing like what I have on my screen, so I think it’s a good one (Instagram gradient was to avoid having to deal with Facebook’s curse of starting very distinct, to be one of the too many blue apps far too soon). The name starting with 't' could be a way to capitalize on people who search by app name and their muscle memory that the app with ranty posts is called t-something.

Also Threads is a messaging app (https://threads.com). Isn't it a trademark violation?

It was quite surprising, I was also surprised people of her age are exchanging discord handles IRL like we used to with MSN/ICQ etc. and then just use it for DMs. She doesn’t even use Snapchat stories because “no one watches stories” and are just direct DMing her friends, and posts general audience stuff to TikTok.

I immediately went and bought Snapchat shares when I found that out.

I'm sure I'm not in the majority though.

Not a bad name, but the “th” in Threads can be problematic to pronounce in other languages.

Good to have competition in this space.

Seriously, I have no dog in this fight. I stopped using Twitter about a year ago when everything went full Elon. I might use Threads at some point, if it gains enough traction.

As if twitter or tweet was when twitter launched?

Similar logo, black and white.

[1]: https://investor.snap.com/overview/default.aspx

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[1] https://fosstodon.org/@kev/110592625692688836

edit: More info here: https://wedistribute.org/2023/06/fedipact-blocking-meta/

As others have pointed out, most hosts will simply de-federate them pretty quickly anyways, and then it will become a useless feature that they turn off.

I suspect it will be one-way anyways, to capitalize on the existing content produced by Mastodon users out there already while they bootstrap. There's no way they'd offer their own content up into the fediverse without the ability to tie it to ads and engagement.

Given the cold reception they've gotten, it will be interesting to see if this feature even makes launch.

Hoping they make the jump, honestly.

At least if this app is good.

Not just you, every publisher, influencer, notable person, institute that uses social media to broadcast information to large groups of people.

... not on the iOS app store?

I think this is arguable. It might be a big part for you, but most people probably use the mobile app.

Depends on which user base they’re focusing. For people who treat tweeting as work, that’s probably not the case.

Running threads off IG has a good shot too.

> Facebook has DNA to optimize feeds.

Isn't that the exact thing that Threads would need to succeed? It's a new feeds-based app, piggybacking their existing social graph. That means you have followers/following immediately.

They even have the market opportunity as twitter stumbles.

I suspect this has some potential to keep users who were getting FOMO on Instagram from signing up to Twitter.

For what it's worth, their cryptocurrency project is absolutely NOT gone. It's gone in the Facebook-ownership sense (in that it was barred from continuing the project by the SEC (?)), but the code and teams are absolutely still iterating on what began at Facebook. Aptos, Sui, and 0L are all projects that have launched to fanfare within the last year.

I'm up for lambasting Facebook as much as the next guy, but I don't think government blocking their projects existence counts as failing.

  1. Facebook Gaming app - https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/30/meta-shutting-down-facebook-gaming-app/
  2. Facebook livestreaming app - https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/05/meta-testing-livestreaming-platform-influencers-super/
  3. Facebook Events - https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/7/13192918/facebook-events-app-ios-android

LI must have more DAU/MAU than Twitter - most people are just scrolling the LI feed, adding random people to their network (better than adding "friends" on FB), posting/re-sharing longer text+image content.

Nonsense. Facebook added the news feed in 2006. FriendFeed was founded in 2007. Facebook acqui-hired them for employees, in particular to hire Bret Taylor as CTO, nothing else.

Google Maps - acquisition Ads - acquisition Youtube - acquisition Android - acquisition

I don't need to list all the failed products (included the 285 different kind of messengers), do I?

But hooooly crap does it underscore how much of a catastrophe Musk’s actions are.

More like the 'fediverse' is scrambling [0] to block Threads before it has even launched.

[0] https://fedipact.online/

Now call me crazy but I disagree. I think - or rather I feel - he's doing an excelent job somehow. He's doing what other executives are afraid to do: he's building and building requires some walls to be hammered down ; and yeah this makes some noise and smoke. He's moving fast and breaking things (if you'd excuse the easy punt). To me, what he's doing is exciting and I think twitter is gonna thrive once the big work is done.

The problem is Reddit has very little real value, and to get that value you'd have to go even further into pushing its users away from the platform as you'd need to be able to target and identify individuals.

Unlike Twitter, Instagram, Facebook etc the majority of Reddit is very intentionally anonymous, not even requiring an email address. A sizable portion still use 'old reddit' because of how awful and hostile the redesign was.

To get it to a point of profitability it would need to be more viable for advertisers, and that only comes with forcing them down users throats, which traditionally is not a reddit thing and would alienate people even more than they've already done recently.

It's also worth noting its 18 years old and still hasn't come remotely close to being profitable.

Today, it's almost as everyone has forgotten about social media monopolization.

"Soon, you'll be able to follow and interact with people on other fediverse platforms, such as Mastodon" Found in the app strings.

I'm not at all sure this will be good for the Fediverse. I already see Meta "improving" upon ActivityPub in incompatible ways, urging people to just use their app (potential quote: "you can see all of the Fediverse anyways") and in the long run (when their own "instance" is big enough) will pull the plug again and be on its own.

I also remember the rumours stating that the Federation part was exclusively targeting large Mastodon servers, and also mostly unidirectional (from Mastodon to Threads).

I don't think the federation support will be all that great from what I've heard. But who knows, maybe it'll bring the Fediverse to the mainstream.

[0] https://daringfireball.net/2023/06/more_on_preemptively_bloc...

Like how GTalk use XMPP, the port 5222 opens, but with tons of customizations and extensions that 3rd-party program can only use the basics?

Sign me up. Or rather, sign up everyone I know besides me :)

It's interesting that Facebook/Instagram keeps launching new apps to identify new usecases. Most of them rarely gets heard of, but perhaps they gain a lot of insight even when they shut down.

On the flip side, I hope it's not like Google where services are launched to die soon for the sake of enhancing a promo package.

You can argue that's a good thing, that a person with 10 followers might be as interesting as someone with 100,000 followers, but it's not for me.

you have to engage with what you want to see, if you join in arguments or constantly like posts of a political viewpoint then you'll never find peace

ie, look inward

On Twitter I've been shown everything from industrial mining supplies, nipple covers, psychology research papers, super yachts, home shopping network junk and just now an ad for an oral dosing technology conference.

I appreciate that Apple has their privacy practices highlighted in a easy to read card so that developers don’t get to hide it in legalease and a click away in a privacy policy.

The next step would be to actually prompt users about this, in the same way that you would get a prompt confirming that if you would like to download a large app when on mobile data. “It looks like you are trying to install the app Threads which reads the following information about you. Are you sure you would like to proceed?”

This would be a natural progressing of the “Ask not to track” dialog that they implemented awhile ago

Recently I tried probably 10 separate times to create a fourth one not even linked to those three, and Instagram outright refused to let me do it with any email address. It even got to a point where on the browser I tried making the account it refuses to let me log in with my normal accounts these days.

It’s frustrating Instagram doesn’t have lists so you need a separate account for every interest.

The public associates Facebook/Meta with excessive data collection, overhyped VR, intrusive tracking, etc. That association is much weaker with Instagram.

On Facebook your experience is mainly your grandmother trying to write messages to you by typing them into any random thread or text box she sees.

Also it uses the Instagram infrastructure e.g. auth and design language.

Joking aside, this is a branding decision.

Fortunately Twitter is privately owned, so I think they will escape the market reactions this time. :)

but uses an open standard

>owned by a large company

This doesn't contradict with the fediverse. Getting large companies on board is important for ActivityPub's adoption.

>and centralized

So is almost every other fediverse instance.

I have some other friends who are semi-pro athletes and the same thing, I "like" their posts only really because they want people to care. Aside from that, it's something I look at while on the toilet for 5 minutes and then put it away.

Not to mention, when was the last time Facebook successfully launched a new standalone social app? Remember Poke, their Snapchat clone? If you do you’re in an exclusive club. They had to pivot the entire Instagram app in order to compete with Snapchat and Twitter isn’t a big enough threat to ever justify doing that. I think it'll get merged into a "text" type of Instagram post eventually and otherwise killed off.

Side note, but:

> There's massive pent-up demand for an alternative

I actually don't think there is. Twitter always had a relatively low number of users compared to other networks. The key (and what Zuckerberg covets) is the cachet of it being where journalists and celebrities break news.

If they get the little details right, I see this as the only real competition to Twitter right now. After trying Mastodon for a few months, it's certainly not it.

(What's up with IG and its hostile UX? Videos can't be fast forwarded or tracked at all, profile pictures can't be zoomed, clicking on it brings you to stories, images can't be copied easily, etc.)

> There's massive pent-up demand for an alternative

I'm not quite convinced by this; I think there's demand for things to go back how they were, but that's unsmashing the glass and is fundamentally impossible. Everyone seems to be resentfully clinging to the sinking platform until they hit a "f you I quit" moment, such as being rate-limited or their favourite account being deleted without warning.

Most of the Twitter Blue subscribers were those that bought into the freedom of speech aspect of Twitter 2.0.

They will likely stay where they are but everyone else will slowly but surely move.

Facebook has celebrity influencers but that is a different demographic.

People are not interchangeable. Eg Journalists would make a very dull Instagram.

What made Twitter big, what made Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat, big is that they all brought something new on the table. Blueskye, mastodon etc. don't. It's just the same.

People that are active on Twitter have spent years to make a following, and there are no reason to go over to another app and create that same following again. Why spend the time and effort when Twitter still is a thing.

Plus people have been talking about leaving Twitter for a year now, but few people actually have.

Personally, I don't have faith Meta will remain comitted to Threads. We spurn Google for killing of projects, but Meta/Facebook has a history of spinning up side projects especially for Instagram and killing them not too long after. Threads has already been killed! https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/17/instagram-will-shut-down-i...

Meta has been trying since 2009. Back then, a former, well-known Facebook employee once told me not to join Twitter (thankfully, I didn’t listen). He said they, “have a wall at the office with a list of all the things Twitter does well. Every week someone checks another item off. We’re going to kill Twitter.”

This moment is probably Meta’s best chance. I’d say, if it doesn’t happen this try, it probably never will.

I'm also a very happy Lemmy and Mastodon user, but going from Twitter to Threads is just trading Elon for Zuckerberg - a useless lateral move.

The accounts that are most active/followed on Twitter are not the type of people that have Instagram accounts.

People with large followings are not going to simply switch, no matter how much they hate Elon.

I say this as someone who is no big fan of Meta.

I’m not sure if matching twitter in that way is a recipe for growth.

Not because I love twitter but rather because of the following

1.Network effects are just that powerful.

2. This looks like a group chat killer rather than a Twitter killer.

So I think the blue bird will go on to live a rather long life.

Sure, the fediverse has been growing, but most users haven't left Twitter, they've just also made an account on the fediverse. I don't see how this will be any different. It's already normal for people to have both a Twitter and an Instagram account, or even stuff like both a TikTok account and posting shorts on YouTube.

> I'm calling it now, this is going to hollow out twitter in extremely rapid fashion. I give twitter a couple of months once this launches, they'll do a Wile E Coyote where they walk off the cliff, followed by plummeting. Meta is going to grind the blue bird to a fine powder, not saying this as a Meta fan, just a casual observer.

More like it destroys Substack Notes, Post, T2, Hive.social and all the other so-called 'alternatives'.

The same people who incorrectly predicted Twitter's immediate collapse are now furious that didn't happen. Now we see them hastefully predicting the end of Twitter again. It is quite hilarious and this will age extremely poorly.

This actually also destroys and corrupts Mastodon from the inside out as they are split in federating or de-federating with Meta already as many admins signed NDAs with Meta to have no choice but to federate.

It seems HNers here really don't understand what network effects are. Quite very fixated and emotional about Twitter's immediate collapse (that didn't happen) and constantly don't learn from history and just continue to make up fantasies on the spot and blinded by schadenfreude.

You can't transfer over your content, likes, replies, followers. So even in the best case scenario where Threads picks up and outshines Twitter in the long term, do expect that to be a long term. At least few years.

That is, unless Elon continues on his steady path of catastrophic degradation of the service, which is also possible.

should. I hope it does. Treating users like they are deserves much worse.

> There's massive pent-up demand for an alternative

Nope.

If there was, we'd already have seen more attempts with some strong competition.

Twitter has always struggled to make more money. Founding team and CEO are gone. Musk tried all he could to get himself out of buying it. Twitter board was desperate to sell it.

Twitter's power users were happy with 140 chars and a textbox. They got there years ago. They're still there not because of what Twitter has become, but despite of it. Not many, not a growing community and they're not leaving.

What kept it alive en-masse was celebs and politicians. They're seemingly not missing Twitter.

Threads is about Ego. Musk burned $400 billion and Zuck $650 billion on shit ideas. This is them dueling, burning more money just to prove they know how to make popular products. In reality neither has a a fking clue about what people actually want.

We'll see this burn to ashes after the elections.

You do not need to be followed on Meta, only liked.

Interactions on Twitter follow “rules” of interest-based disputes and discussion (sports, finance, AI dooming, technology predictions).

You do not need to be liked on Twitter, only followed.

But I wouldn't feel bad if Threads took over Twitter's most important data generators (politicians, journalists, newssites). I dislike what Twitter has been turned into, it's close to nothing else but a megaphone for the owner to mostly troll the world.

If Threads would be usable on a desktop via a website, I'd gladly register, but I won't install social media apps on my phone except for HN and Reddit via a 3rd party apps of good reputation.

This has become the indicator of hubris, the red flag that indicates the rest should be taken, at best, with a very large pinch of salt.

You cannot move a 100k followers from twitter to thread. All the influential people HAVE to keep using twitter to serve their followers. Even if they build a following on thread, it will take years to build what they have on twitter.

Yes, it will beat Twitter, it is what Twitter ever wanted to be.

This just seems like they want another vertical to vacuum user data and cram advertising.

I'm not against it, I'd just rather it was its own platform.

It's inherent in the content type.

It's just hard to argue with photos, but it's the default with text, especially given the propensity for some people to interpret everything in the worst possible light.

HN disables answers after some period of time, which appears to be a couple of weeks.

I think Twitter won't go in a couple of weeks. I also think that in case of Twitter not going anywhere in a year or so, we won't be able to call your call, due to HN comments disabled.

What do you propose to resolve that?

Regarding the core of your proposal, these who use Twitter and these who use Instagram, are different people. Twitter is primarily text based, Instagram is primarily picture and video based.

My prediction is that there will not be huge (dozens of percents) outflow from Twitter to Threads. I also think that there won't be noticeable (dozens of percents) use of Threads by Instagram users.

Instagram is already a social network of people with needs different from social network like Twitter.

between the OnlyFans models and AI bots roasting people on demand, its a bit of an amusement park!

Believe it or not, there are also group chats in the DMs

Your kind of opinion is clearly from someone who lives in a bubble or inexperienced.

No matter how hard I try to keep my Twitter timeline clean of politics, the algorithm fills my timeline.

If Threads doesn't do that, I'm in.

Except it won't, because two decades of social media have taught those companies that 'engagement' is key, so they'll shovel the same *.

> I'm calling it now, this is going to hollow out twitter in extremely rapid fashion.

Good, but I expect the first movers are going to be the anti-Musk types that tried to go to Mastodon, which means half that "political discourse" will move to a different app. So there will be two echo chambers.

> they'll have a userbase in the millions within hours of launch that's able to hop over from IG.

Well done on this prediction.

Twitter may die but this will not replace it.

RIP Threads, 2023-2024 (generously).