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Threads users down by more than a half

bbc.com

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Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#311

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.

in my world of twitter/x I see no signs of shrinking...

I clicked through from the sibling link to Elon's profile, and only see posts from last April and older? The reach of the site is.. not reaching. It is pulling back.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It wouldn't surprise me if Twitter revenue is down. It also wouldn't surprise me if Twitter revenue is up. Unfortunately, with it being private I don't think we'll ever know.

> Whether its shrinking or not is somewhat beside the point.

In a thread entirely about Twitter/threads user count, whether it's shrinking is the entire point.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#313
post #4

It seems to have enough people that it has some legs. I am really looking forward to a web version of it, but otherwise enjoy it, despite some growing pains. Edit I'm here: https://www.threads.net/@davidnwelton Edit2 If I think about it some, the biggest drawback about Threads for me is swapping one egocentric billionaire who is rapidly going off the rails for another who is, for the moment, more stable, but has stil…

> It seems to have enough people that it has some legs.

My view too. Not the best service ever offered, but allows me to continue distancing myself from Twitter.

Would I much prefer it if Twitter was a public company and/or ran by anyone else? Sure, but that isn't happening, so, I'll take Mastodon and any other reasonable alternative. We'll see how the market pans out.

An aspect of me wants Mastodon to win... but there's a deep cynicism in it ever working at Twitter scale (which may be the point, in the end).

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#314

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…

Half a billion users? Is Elon counting everyone who sees an embed tweet as a user?

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#315
It's pretty common that after a peak of new signups, most do not convert to long term active users. This doesn't even take into account that most "active users" tend to never post anything, they just leech. They still count as MAU. I'm sure that Meta has plenty of ways to boost that number in the long term but overall I find the entire thing underwhelming.

Threads is text-based Instagram. But not even that as you can very well include photos. It has exactly the same shallow culture as Instagram: commercial, flat, vain.

Meta has openly expressed that it's disinterested or even hostile to news/journalism making their way to the platform (which comes with a lot of political flame-wars), instead to focus on making it a "fun" platform. Quite obviously because advertisers prefer networks without controversy.

Users may self-censor as on Threads the link to your real name is not very far away. Many users may have a real name Insta account linked up which in turn is linked to your Facebook account. Even if not visibility linked to your real name, internally you should assume it's there. So who knows what happens to all those accounts when you step over the line in Threads?

Hence, it's not Twitter which is defined by the culture war taking the main stage. Twitter is raw, edgy and toxic. It's also known for its real-time coverage of events, which Threads so far lacks. It also produces quite a lot of original content, whether they be memes or otherwise. You'll find none of that originating on Meta networks.

As Twitter seems on its way down, especially high follower users (such as journalists) are lost. There is no longer a "cultural network" where you push a message and get reach. None of the alternatives work for this purpose either.

I have no idea what will become of Twitter, but I do know to keep an open mind as we live in wild times. Just because Musk is a chaos monkey does not mean that it will not eventually rebound or even surpass old Twitter.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#316
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be a desire to watch Meta fail, and that's reflected in the media coverage around Threads. This is broadly true of many large tech companies, but particularly Meta/Facebook.

Well yeah. The honeymoon is over and we've seen how morally bankrupt these companies are. Twitter has someone who posted child abuse images (as a warning or something) but doesn't ban them because they create engagement. Meta bought a VPN company and paid people (I think in some cases kids/teens) to use it so they can slurp up their entire internet browsing. Amazon has people pissing into water bottles so the founder…

> Twitter has someone who posted child abuse images

Can you say more on this?

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not just ignore the "chaos monkeys" and focus on your writers instead? no one is forcing you to interact with anyone you don't like on X.

What’s X?

It's a slang term for MDMA. Clearly the poster means that you don't have to interact with anyone when you're on ecstasy.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#318
post #228

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.

There seems to be a desire to watch Meta fail, and that's reflected in the media coverage around Threads. This is broadly true of many large tech companies, but particularly Meta/Facebook.

> There seems to be a desire to watch Meta fail

around here the only desire that exceeded the desire to watch Meta fail was the desire to see Threads kill Twitter first on its way down

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#319

It's pretty common that after a peak of new signups, most do not convert to long term active users. This doesn't even take into account that most "active users" tend to never post anything, they just leech. They still count as MAU. I'm sure that Meta has plenty of ways to boost that number in the long term but overall I find the entire thing underwhelming. Threads is text-based Instagram. But not even that as you can…

It’s hard to say. What I see is a lot of people in my network really scaling back or dropping Twitter and maybe playing with the alternatives but not really embracing them. I suspect that for many it will be a case of “Social media was nice while it lasted.”

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#320
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…

What's a Twitter? We're supposed to be xing and rexing our xs on x now.
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