- Interesting that they went with a stand-alone app instead of baking this into IG like they did with Stories (which killed Snap overnight). I wonder how much they’ll advertise the download inside of IG.
- Can’t say I like the name. Doesn’t evoke much emotion in me. The term “thread” is rarely used by normies without the word “Twitter” in front of it. And the choice of the plural form is interesting.
- The logo looks like it belongs to an app that should start with the letter ‘a’. Confusing that they go with a t-word like Twitter but then make the logo look like a different letter. Also, no color? Will it really stay black and white or will it adopt the IG gradient?
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.
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Did not expect Fediverse integration from Meta.
[1] https://9to5google.com/2023/07/03/threads-instagram-app-coun...
[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.
This time, Threads is a fully fledged app. Getting users to adopt a new app might take as much time as getting Messenger installed. Still, Instagram has a robust social graph to lead users towards downloading it. In fact, they seem to have already onboarded users when they implemented part of Threads with the status update feature in the Instagram messages view.
Twitter will probably remain used by relatively "anti-social" people. In the States, that may be by politicized users, fueled by Elon's freedom fighting. Here in Japan, Twitter is very popular because of the sense of anonymity, coupled with the use of Kanji characters that achieves concision within 140 characters. Instagram might be too social for us (esp. male older than 25).
It will probably pain me to see the diaspora of users among many microblogging services. The transition to a new microblogging hub may be painful for both Twitter Inc (ie. X Corp) and Twitter users.
It's funny to see that Threads is the re-implementation of Facebook status updates before news articles swamped the Newsfeed. Meta's microblogging came back full circle.
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.
A big part of twitter is the web client... and embedded tweets all over the internet.
Did they start this product by cloning instagram and removing the image centric approach? Why is this not a website first? My gut feel is that this competes as much with instagram as it does with Twitter.
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.
- WhatsApp - acqusition
- Instagram - acquistion
- Messenger - acquisition
- Oculus - acquisition
Facebook has DNA to optimize feeds.
It, simply, lack the DNA to build good products from scratch.
My gut feeling no one will care about Threads, 6 months from now.EDIT:
- Facebook was all-in on cryptocurrencies. The project is fully gone.
- Facebook was all-in on Messenger as a platform. The project is gone as well.
- Facebook also launched dating a few years back. That project is dead too.
- Someone pointed out in comments that Feed & Like as a concept was also based out of an acquisition called FriendFeed - https://techcrunch.com/2009/08/10/facebook-acquires-friendfeed/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-androidLI 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.
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.
If TikTok gets banned, where to the users go? Instagram.
Threads could replace Twitter.
Reddit is going downhill... Maybe Meta could even buy it in a firesale?
Outside of chat apps like Discord, Slack, Teams and Telegram (which compete with WhatsApp), Meta will have consolidated most of the world's social media under them. And that's assuming they dont buy out Discord.
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 :)
[0]. https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/17/instagram-will-shut-down-i...
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.
What I care for when I open Twitter: - news - hearing from other people from the dev community
If Threads can deliver this, I will be hooked
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
#1 should be completely, actually bifurcating the experience from their other platforms. If they want me to use my Instagram login and want to make it easy for me to follow my IG followers, fine.
But the temptation to “carry” the network or the content over from Instagram or Facebook is going to be strong for them, because it looks like a baked-in advantage their investors will expect them to leverage to its fullest. In reality it’s the total opposite - I’ll be gone instantly if a bunch of low quality content from people I’m not interested in hearing from (read: that girl from high school I might follow on Facebook.)
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
While what makes twitter great is that it is a more serious platform where you can get the ‘insight’ of professionals (journalists, politicians, etc).
That being said, Twitter’s brand is in the toilet right now. Maybe that is enough for this to attract people.
I do wonder what the alternative would be? Whatsapp branding? Feels off too… Would it have been better to use a new brand?
So I'm not looking forward to trying to sign up with them.
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.
Reinforce insta as a “platform” where features are now labeled as “apps”. Continues to reinforce engagement metrics at insta app level, so big win politically for the insta org inside meta. I’m sure a lot of promos coming down next cycle. Also very easy user acquisition since it piggy backs on existing insta user base.
Insta maps more to the public facing vibe that Twitter does, whereas Facebook seems more for friends and family. Insta also more easily monetized than say WhatsApp, so the business moves all track.
Overall curious to see what happens to the landscape. At a minimum it may leach away engagement from Twitter, so probably not very favorable for Twitter stock price.
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.
There's a tangible difference in Twitter now that Musk took over. Raunchy, sometimes offensive jokes are now actually possible on the site. I use Twitter a lot more than I ever did because of it. I don't want Instagram 2.0 with nothing but "models" and stolen videos.
The circle of Web 2.X (3.X?) progress continues! This was called the 'Facebook Wall' in 2007. You could write stories, post links, photos, etc. It worked and scaled. Not much longer until they progress into a 'student directory and message' app, exclusively for college and university students.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Facebook_features#Wall
Love it.
But, I generally feel social media is dying in far bigger ways thank just these dilutions.
People don't trust it, and are caring far less.
They hey-day and the novelty has completely worn of for the majority who are not narcissistic enough to put the energy in to arguing or self-promoting.
Reality is here to stay!
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.
There's massive pent-up demand for an alternative, and so far Bluesky and Mastodon haven't been able to fulfill it due to scalability and network stickiness reasons. Meta can absorb all of twitter's traffic without breaking stride, and they'll have a userbase in the millions within hours of launch that's able to hop over from IG.
RIP twitter, 2006-2023.
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).
https://www.threads.net looks like where this will live on the web
I don't see any use of the threads app.
People don't come to Twitter because of the app.
Is there anything else that distinguishes this from existing Facebook products?
Maybe I am not the avenge user I don’t need an IOS app for text, web is fine.
The present Twitter alternatives (Mastodon, Bluesky, Spoutible) are just too hobbyist or finicky.
Meta will presumably bring an ease-of-use to this service and, crucially, scale from minute 1. They're the building blocks of Twitter's current incumbency position, and Meta/Threads can replicate them straight out the gate.
That is a huge advantage.
On the other side of the ledger, the utility of Twitter keeps sliding. Not sure how many Hacker News users are Twitter users or what the crossover is, but the whole blue tick 'thing' has reduced the utility in one key surprising way: high quality replies under popular accounts are impossible to find. It's like if you could buy upvotes on Hacker News to get to the top almost. Secondarily to that is the stuff over the last few days with very low rate limits on how many tweets you can view - if you can't use a social network, it tends to stop being useful.
While I wouldn't say Threads is a slam dunk guaranteed success, I would say it's the most probable contender of all the ones out there.
If you're going to take on Twitter why on earth would you make Instagram a part of that when the two share nothing in common.
Could it be that this was put in together in a couple sprints as they saw Twitter in a weak position?
Or maybe they have a lot of products like this on the bench and release them when the time is right?
Focused UX is something I feel has been really lost by many apps coming out today.
Nature abhors a vacuum, I guess.
[1]: https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/introducing-t...
[2]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/17/22787783/instagram-threa...
If they’re going to ride on the coattails of the existing influencers, might make more sense to keep it a feature than a brand new app. The existing influencers would have no extra incentive to spend efforts on a whole new app if they’re addressing the same audience and won’t be gaining new set of audience.
Or keep it completely new to excite new wannabe influencers and they will put in the extra effort and drive activity at the beginning.
If fbook can somehow persuade a few important influencers to switch over on launch day that could get a bunch of instagram using twitter users to download.
I'd love to see Blue Sky get traction, but I have to imagine that various government agencies that are looking for a new service to use for their communications are going to be more comfortable pivoting to a Meta product than some new startup.
My guess is they will possibly see some growth from instagram power users who are convinced to try it, but I don't anticipate a mass diaspora from twitter to threads.
EDIT: others in this thread are claiming that it may be compatible with activity pub. If that is the case then it may look a little more interesting to those leaving twitter.
"To delete your Threads profile and data, you'll need to delete your instagram account."
Instagram is already a "twitter" app they have. I think IG idea is even better: tweet with image. Of course, they messed it up big time with various anti-consumer measures. Why would this be any different? I am also wondering, if Threads fail – what do they lose?
Its the same with Notes of Substack. If Notes fail in 2 years – can they continue? I imagine they already felt negative effect of their move.
Why absolutely no big company (MS, facebook, google, amazon, etc...) is attempting the same with Reddit? Not even discord has done any single change to try to steal any userbase from it.
When Elon Musk laid off more than 80% of Twitter's workforce (or maybe 90%, the number is quickly increasing), many people said this would prove that a company needed only a handle of software engineers to be successful. If they are correct, it paints a bleak future where software engineer jobs will be forever cut down. I hope Twitter falls so it proves the reverse: a software company cannot survive without enough engineers.
While Facebook also laid people off, the percentage is much lower than Twitter. It will be even better if Facebook has to recruit people to win this battle.
Twitter at least had one you could actually talk to before Elon took over, but Instagram has lacked support contact methods for years at this point.
Using a platform where you have no recourse or even method of reaching out if something goes awry is always a dangerous game to play :(
I guess it makes sense to launch iOS first since those are usually regarded as the highest status users / demographic.
I feel like hashtags (where you can put them on any message you want) aren't quite the same thing, but maybe that's just because it makes cross-posting more of a blended experience, where I can't tell if replies are linked to the #localcitynearme or the #coffee tag. Their example post about the coffee shop is a great example -- I might be interested in the discussion if it was near me, in which case comments of other coffee shops around the corner might be fantastic. But if I was reading the post because I follow that user for their singing in a jazz band that I listen to, and I live in a different country, it's just total noise that I wouldn't want to read.
I've only viewed the 'web app store' page and not the real app store page, maybe there are more details there.
Mark my words, the Meta revival story starts now thanks to Twitter and Reddit killing themselves.
I think Meta will realize that it is best to stick with what they are good at: Building profitable apps via social interactions.
But for more than a year now it says it was discontinued at start, and I cannot login again.
I am so likely to use Threads from Instagram /s
I imagine this is as much about capturing the young people not using Facebook as it is about rivaling Twitter, if not more.
Circa 2010's: Facebook sucks, let's all move to Twitter
Circa 2023:OMG Threads killed Twitter, Threads is so great
Circa 2030's: Threads is so lame, let's all move to something else
LOL almost forgot that Meta owns Instagram. Nice try Facebook!
#deleteFacebook
Hope you are from planet earth BTW.
Whereas Twitter now prides itself in being the free speech absolutist social media app, and information flows freely there. While they do have Community Notes to add context to potential (real) misinformation, at least it's guided by Twitter users and doesn't prevent people from seeing the original post without jumping through hoops, and there's no risk of being suspended for angering the Ministry of Truth, brought to you by government officials looking to cover-up inconvenient facts.
(To be clear: I'm 100% expecting "Threads" to become that in the short-to-medium term, unless they have some specific moderation techniques in place.)
This won't make your life "great", mind me. I'm pretty sure it will make it better.
Good luck.
Does anyone who works on apps / software / whatever ever consider how tiring it is to have to adopt all this sheet? It's like the digital equivalent of fashion. Literally just waxes and wanes between apps that are all functionally the same based on trends.
Personally I would not use Threads because of association to FB/Meta. But likely many others will.
The only real users left on Twitter will be bots and Musk rats
tech-giants are so powerful, they don't have to move-fast-to-break-things, a small tantrum/jitter (e.g Musk-twitter, or rush-to-replace) can mess-up a considerable part of the ecosystem around them; including their own finances.
happy to try it, out of curiosity.
1. Twitter is all about who is there. How will they make people start posting on this?
2. New platforms take off because they innovate, not because they do what others do but slightly tweaked.
3. I have a really hard time seeing people mass escaping twitter to this du to morals. Facebook/Zuck is just as reviled as Twitter/Musk. If not more reviled. Mastodon has the moral high ground, but still can't take off.
And why does Instagram need a whole new app for text posts?
Are we about to see a hacker news for image posts?
Having said that, the cultures on Instagram and Twitter are no doubt different. So it's hard for me to tell what will transpire here. However, how much of these cultural differences are due to Instagram not having had a live text feed for breaking news etc. before? And how malleable is social network culture?
Threads will also move Instagram closer to Twitter with this. I think how well Meta suceeeds at this is vital to how much of a threat to Twitter this is going to be. Not only this app itself needs to find users; for a real threat they also need to use it for similar things as on Twitter, e.g. politics, a controversial celebrity post here and there, breaking news on the Ukrainian war, earthquakes, imploding submarines...
Finally, I wonder how this will affect Facebook! With both a photo feed, a TikTok-style reels feed, Snapchat-like stories, and Twitter-like Threads... This app that is NOT Facebook is certainly starting to look very complete indeed. Facebook is big where I live so I "need" to be on it to stay in touch, but I can see myself residing more and more on Messages and Marketplace alone, now more than ever.
New users will find empty content, mostly discussions that are already on twitter but at a small scale and reach
A film about life before, during and after a fictional nuclear attack.
Not only there's this limit but they also broke Tweetdeck which is the only way to really use Twitter
Not a Twitter killer after all. Or any kind of killer.
Facebook and Instagram have been stable, if nothing else... But I feel like Meta is under immense pressure to monetize users as more and more see the "Facebook is for old people and TikTok is draining Instagram" writing on the wall.
Influence bloggers who need to issue public apologies?
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wow ok...
I unfortunately am stuck with the ones I have because of their ubiquity. I would jump ship in a heartbeat if a viable alternative actually took off.
2021-2023 social media rotating villain vs 2016-2020 social media rotating villain.
Oh what's that, I'm hearing a new villain, Mr Chew has entered the stage?
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It's only logical that meta now sets to take over Twitter, which will happen in a matter of months. Their product is superior and contains very few backdoors on its encryption.
All hail Mark!
edit: I now realize that the time transportation function might also take you to an alternate time branch, disregard my comment if it's irrelevant