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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

#301

Post by monetus »

justusthane wrote: post #290
lxgr wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sure beats having to bootstrap one, would be my hunch. Even just having a few people automatically followed can make a difference, even if most people diverge quickly after joining.

Hmm, not for me. I’m a pretty casual IG user, but I am following 500+ accounts, all of which I enjoy. My first experience with Threads (despite importing my IG profile) was a feed full of accounts I had never heard of before, and almost nothing from the accounts I follow. Granted, that’s probably because the accounts I follow weren’t posting Threads yet, but but even now things haven’t changed much in that regard. Ad…

> I’m sure if I put a little effort into it I could find more interesting accounts to follow

Plenty of good developer-focused content now, and they implemented a following-only feed. Worth having, for me so far.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#302

Post by panic »

dhosek wrote: 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 also possible there will be no successor place.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#304

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

nerdawson wrote: post #66
hooverd wrote: 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 (mastodon) peaked in November. Musk's antics might prop it (Mastodon) up every once in a while but the long term trend doesn't look good.

At least that's what I think you mean. Lots of ambiguous "it" in the text above.

Not accurate according to https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/ or my subjective experience. mastodon is fine. mastodon is growing. Mastodon is fundamentally not a business that needs to "get big fast or die trying" so that VCs can make their big ROI back. Slow, steady improvement is fine. Scalloped growth is not evidence of a platform in decline. (1)

I'd say - to write the above in a clearer way: "Twitter peaked in November 2022 and then went into decline. Musk's antics might prop twitter up every once in a while but the long term trend doesn't look good. My prediction is in a couple of years time, the only remaining users of twitter will be the most avid hardcore fans."

1) https://doctorow.medium.com/of-course-mastodon-lost-users-c4...

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#305

Post by potatototoo99 »

justapassenger wrote: post #180

It’s super funny to see people framing that as Threads failing. They totally may fail. But even after that initial drop (which is expected, for something that managed to get so much hype) they’re likely still the biggest app in the history in terms of DAU in few weeks after the launch. And if there’s one thing Meta knows how to do is to copy successful idea and slowly grind the growth till it dominates market.

What is one thing Meta succeeded in copying and beat the original?

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#306

Post by markdown »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #197
justapassenger wrote: post #180

It’s super funny to see people framing that as Threads failing. They totally may fail. But even after that initial drop (which is expected, for something that managed to get so much hype) they’re likely still the biggest app in the history in terms of DAU in few weeks after the launch. And if there’s one thing Meta knows how to do is to copy successful idea and slowly grind the growth till it dominates market.

First of all, I doubt the premise of this entirely, e.g. Pokémon Go almost certainly had higher DAU weeks after it launched (and it was growing rather than shrinking). But secondly, I'm skeptical that it's even fair to talk about Threads stats using the same measurements as any "new" app, since it's really an extension of Instagram. You don't make a new account for Threads, you just use your Instagram account. They a…

Yes, this was a massive miss-step IMO, and will be their unthreading.

I and half the people I know on Twitter are not owners of Instagram accounts. It's absurd to require Insta to login to Threads.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#307

Post by dragonwriter »

dahfizz wrote: post #300
peter422 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this logic Twitter should also be growing, as it’s even better than threads in terms of content. Yet not only is Twitter not growing but it’s shrinking. I think your expectations for success in this vertical are off.

> Yet not only is Twitter not growing but it’s shrinking. Source? Musk just tweeted about a new all-time monthly user record. It's not impossible that he would lie, but my impression is not at all that Twitter is shrinking. There's a whole lot of discussion about Twitter shrinking and high profile people leaving, but they don't. Stephen king comes to mind as a big critic that threatened over and over to leave, but he…

> Musk just tweeted about a new all-time monthly user record. It's not impossible that he would lie

On the rare occasion he makes non-trivial, falsifiable claims, its pretty common that they turn out to be other-than-accurate, yes.

> but my impression is not at all that Twitter is shrinking.

My impression is that the set of advertisers (not regular Blue users, though they are a different kind of advertiser paying for reach) are narrowing and moving downmarket in a way which would take truly enormous numbers of Blue users to compensate for.

Whether its shrinking or not is somewhat beside the point.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#309

Post by crazygringo »

potatototoo99 wrote: post #305
justapassenger wrote: post #180

It’s super funny to see people framing that as Threads failing. They totally may fail. But even after that initial drop (which is expected, for something that managed to get so much hype) they’re likely still the biggest app in the history in terms of DAU in few weeks after the launch. And if there’s one thing Meta knows how to do is to copy successful idea and slowly grind the growth till it dominates market.

What is one thing Meta succeeded in copying and beat the original?

Well, MySpace for starters.

Facebook Marketplace seems to have totally replaced Craiglist as well, where I live, for buying/selling. Facebook Messenger took over e.g. MSN for a lot of people, the News Feed replaced a dedicated news site for a lot of people, and so forth. Events replaced Evite I think (or similar?), FB Photos basically replaced Flickr back in the day...

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#310

Post by mkl »

potatototoo99 wrote: post #305
justapassenger wrote: post #180

It’s super funny to see people framing that as Threads failing. They totally may fail. But even after that initial drop (which is expected, for something that managed to get so much hype) they’re likely still the biggest app in the history in terms of DAU in few weeks after the launch. And if there’s one thing Meta knows how to do is to copy successful idea and slowly grind the growth till it dominates market.

What is one thing Meta succeeded in copying and beat the original?

MySpace? Most of the other pre-Facebook social media sites too. It's not about being an exact copy, but sharing enough features that it can subsume those roles.
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