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Threads users down by more than a half

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Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#181
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

87.6% of Twitter active-seconds are mobile, according to Elon's most recent data. Would've expected closer to 70/30 personally.

And do you actually believe this statistic? I don't know a single person who willingly prefers a limited, bogged-down experience of any product (social media or otherwise) over a full-fledged desktop client.

I have mod rights on a general subreddit (a city), and I see that mobile is consistently 75-80% of the traffic. That seems consistent with the numbers above.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#182
post #72

The reason Threads is failing is that, for whatever reason, they chose to launch without a desktop experience. I can't imagine how many users went to threads.net, clicked around for a few minutes while being extremely confused on how to sign up or access the product, then left permanently. No, I'm not going to download your mobile app, and most people won't either.

What % of users do you think care about a desktop experience? I expect the vast majority of users would be mobile-only. I'm sure you can find relevant statistics about Twitters desktop vs mobile usage.

I know I gave up on it anyway without desktop. But what I really gave up on was lack of discovery on how to get my twitter network replicated. I was at least able to do that with Mastodon for all its UX sins.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#183
post #23

I don’t use Twitter because I like Twitter, but because that’s where the people that I like to interact with (mostly writers) are. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Twitter isn’t going to be that place with each new chaos monkey attack from Musk, but what the successor place is going to be remains to be seen. Threads failed the smell test early on because it started out with algorithmic feed only and the algori…

> I don’t use Twitter because I like Twitter, but because that’s where the people that I like to interact with (mostly writers) are

For these cases, I follow the Twitter accounts on Mastodon by way of the mirror sites - bird.makeup is the most popular I believe.

"But you can't respond to people there". Yeah, but I don't care. Since Elon changed the meaning of the blue checkmark and made it effectively pay-to-play, the chances of someone seeing my responses are effectively zero.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#185
post #23

I don’t use Twitter because I like Twitter, but because that’s where the people that I like to interact with (mostly writers) are. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Twitter isn’t going to be that place with each new chaos monkey attack from Musk, but what the successor place is going to be remains to be seen. Threads failed the smell test early on because it started out with algorithmic feed only and the algori…

> It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Twitter isn’t going to be that place with each new chaos monkey attack from Musk, but what the successor place is going to be remains to be seen. First, Mastodon was going to be the new place. It wasn't. Then Threads came along and again everyone said it would be the death knell for Twitter. It wasn't. My takeaway would be quite the opposite. While everything that comes along…

Mastodon (actually, the Fediverse as a whole) is still growing in a very healthy, organic rate. Threads just tried to buy its way into a bootstrapped network.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#186
I want threads to succeed so badly. It's the only app I've ever actually liked the UI of. I've tried numerous Mastodon apps (Ivory included), BlueSky, Twitter, and all of their web variants. I find myself returning to Threads even if the functionality is limited, because it's just that enjoyable. I'm rooting for 'em!

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year Mastodon went through a hype cycle. Everyone was declaring Twitter over. You had people stating they were leaving for good, dual-posting, etc. Funnily enough many of those same people are back on Twitter today with little mention of Mastodon. It peaked in November and then went into decline. As people leave, the value of the network goes down so even more people leave. Musk's antics might prop it up every o…

It did peak in December last year, but then it "declined" and stabilized at more than double the active users it had before Elon bought Twitter: https://mastodon-analytics.com/

That chart is missing the big late-june/early-july burst that came when Twitter locked out non-registered users and put a cap on read tweets. Big bump in new registrations and since then activity has been up a bunch as well. Not as big as December, but mostly because it was short lived.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#188
post #90
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What % of users do you think care about a desktop experience? I expect the vast majority of users would be mobile-only. I'm sure you can find relevant statistics about Twitters desktop vs mobile usage.

87.6% of Twitter active-seconds are mobile, according to Elon's most recent data. Would've expected closer to 70/30 personally.

That data is biased by the small minority of super active users who spend 4-5 hours/day on Twitter.

The relevant number would be to condition on only the 20th to 80th percentile users (by time spent/day) and see their breakdown. I am going to bet that number is more biased towards desktop, while both the 0-20% (occasional users) and 80-100% percentiles will be mobile focused.

The other confounding effect is the bots and the pseudo-bots (humans operating many accounts). I don't know how they change these numbers.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#190
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon isn't going to be /the/ new place. Hopefully it will become part of many new places.

Last year Mastodon went through a hype cycle. Everyone was declaring Twitter over. You had people stating they were leaving for good, dual-posting, etc. Funnily enough many of those same people are back on Twitter today with little mention of Mastodon. It peaked in November and then went into decline. As people leave, the value of the network goes down so even more people leave. Musk's antics might prop it up every o…

> It peaked in November and then went into decline.

https://fedidb.org/software/Mastodon

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