How the new Threads app is made • Hacker News Board

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#171

Post by stbenjam » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:32 AM UTC

badrequest wrote: post #147

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is downright quiet on the topic, with only 21 posts over 20 comments since the launch (2023-07-05), 4 posts per day. Compare that to the Reddit blackout posts which seem to be closer to 8 posts per day. Only 8 posts with over 100 comments, whereas it's hard to find even a single Reddit blackout post at less than 100 comments. My friends in every other community are buzzing about Threads, but here on HN someone com…

I think it's more that the HN crowd cannot stand to think, much less utter the phrase "you've gotta hand it to Mark Zuckerberg and crew." That's at least the feeling I have to get over when I praise Threads.

I don’t think it’s that. There’s just no need for a Twitter clone without porn.

Although they did do a very good job. The app is well thought out and the service has been rock solid since launch.

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#172

Post by housemusicfan » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:34 AM UTC

jshier wrote: post #168

housemusicfan wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't far from the truth. Have you seen the list of App Store data collection permissions it requests? For what amounts in functionality to little more than a terminal session to a BBS? Holy shit. I verified it's longer than TikTok's which is widely assumed to be a hostile state-backed surveillance tool at this point. For Threads, the following may be "collected and linked to your identity": Health & Fitness Pur…

Those aren't permissions it requests, it has no permissions by default. Instead it's the broadest interpretation of data it could gather from any of its features and dependencies (an app granting a permission grants it to all frameworks as well). But they will have to ask about all of them, especially health data. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a broad, general list they imported from other Meta apps in the rush…

The health one is what raised eyebrows for me. That wasn't included by accident.

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#173

Post by uw_rob » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:38 AM UTC

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #72

Honestly threads is so minimum. A solo dev can pull this off in half a year. Only thing complicated is scale. But meta has that in place. Threads team is a corporate cushion team.

Creating a minimal product that customers love is far harder than created a bloated app that has the kitchen sink approach. It's impressive to me that the devs were able to pick and choose the absolute minimum set of nice features and go with that.

> Only thing complicated is scale. But meta has that in place.

This is silly. Scale is hard. Rolling out to massive scale on the first attempt is even harder. Within the first day they got 30 million active users without any hiccups. That's not easy. Look at AAA game launches for just how hard this is to get right.

One other thing here. They choose the right minimal set of features so that rolling out and scaling quickly would be successful. Again, that's impressive, because they didn't paint themselves into a corner supporting something that is difficult to scale successfully.

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#174

Post by jshier » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:38 AM UTC

housemusicfan wrote: post #172

jshier wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those aren't permissions it requests, it has no permissions by default. Instead it's the broadest interpretation of data it could gather from any of its features and dependencies (an app granting a permission grants it to all frameworks as well). But they will have to ask about all of them, especially health data. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a broad, general list they imported from other Meta apps in the rush…

The health one is what raised eyebrows for me. That wasn't included by accident.

I'd be surprised if it actually requested it. At the same time, it could just be an overly broad interpretation of the fact that they obviously gather any health data you post about on the service.

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#175

Post by TulliusCicero » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:41 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #96

I'm kind of amazed at how saturated the news is with stories about Threads. And not just tech news, but also every mainstream news site has at least one or more "submarine" marketing articles promoting Threads. Meta Marketing Team: You're not fooling anyone into thinking these are grassroots and viral, but honestly, well done with the media saturation. Meta's clearly got all the right channels on full-blast. It's rea…

This comment is the HN bubble talking.

Threads has accumulated a huge number of users in a very short amount of time, and it's related to the instability, near-implosion we've seen at Twitter from Musk's leadership. Of course that's big news.

It's just not really big news here, because people here REALLY hate Meta (and probably dislike the Twitter-style model of social media anyway).

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#176

Post by uw_rob » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:45 AM UTC

akira2501 wrote: post #42

999900000999 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The target consumer doesn't care, wasting time optimizing for space doesn't make sense in this instance . I'm a little disappointed they didn't go purely React Native here. It would have been a great showcase as they ultimately own the React Native project.

> The target consumer doesn't care The app's target consumer is advertisers, and the app is this way because of those advertisers and their concerns. I'm not sure the person using the app is a "consumer" from Meta's point of view, more like a "digital subscriber."

The app doesn't shows advertisements right now.

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#177

Post by yen223 » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:48 AM UTC

dmix wrote: post #150

Apparently Jetpack Compose is an Android copy of SwiftUI? https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose Only two HN threads with comments discussing this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32255709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24284517

Both Jetpack Compose and SwiftUI came out around the same time, in 2019 I think.

It's probably more correct to say that both frameworks copied React Native and made it more "native"

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#178

Post by housemusicfan » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:56 AM UTC

jshier wrote: post #174

housemusicfan wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The health one is what raised eyebrows for me. That wasn't included by accident.

I'd be surprised if it actually requested it. At the same time, it could just be an overly broad interpretation of the fact that they obviously gather any health data you post about on the service.

Not sure how I feel about extending the benefit of the doubt to one of, if not the number one, least trustworthy companies on the planet.

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#179

Post by afterburner » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:58 AM UTC

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #104

ryandrake wrote: post #96

I'm kind of amazed at how saturated the news is with stories about Threads. And not just tech news, but also every mainstream news site has at least one or more "submarine" marketing articles promoting Threads. Meta Marketing Team: You're not fooling anyone into thinking these are grassroots and viral, but honestly, well done with the media saturation. Meta's clearly got all the right channels on full-blast. It's rea…

HN is downright quiet on the topic, with only 21 posts over 20 comments since the launch (2023-07-05), 4 posts per day. Compare that to the Reddit blackout posts which seem to be closer to 8 posts per day. Only 8 posts with over 100 comments, whereas it's hard to find even a single Reddit blackout post at less than 100 comments. My friends in every other community are buzzing about Threads, but here on HN someone com…

Maybe it's because HN is more like Reddit than Twitter/Threads, so there's more reasons to care about it. And a lot of Redditors probably came to talk about it here, some because their favorite subreddit was on strike.

Also the Reddit situation was very dramatic and adversarial, Threads is just a new boring product with a clean launch.

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#180

Post by dghughes » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 3:02 AM UTC

Gh0stRAT wrote: post #117

themitigating wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you slow clap at your last statement because you figured it all out? Because of Elon Musk Twitter has been in the news for months. That includes his impulsive decision to buy it, firing massive amounts of people, and to keep everyone focused on him a barrage of right wing themed tweets about hot button political topics. Of course the news media is reporting on this. Then a massive US tech company, whose founder h…

You forgot the literal billionaire cage match that Musk tried to initiate but then backed out of when it seemed like Zuck wasn't afraid to fight him. Seemed like everyone was talking about it for a couple of days…

Elon didn't back out of the fight his Mom told him to cut it out. Really. I'm no Elon fan but it's pretty funny and good that his Mom has some common-sense.

In a way they are in a cage match only it's Threads vs Twitter.