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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

#391

Post by aleph_minus_one »

paganel wrote: post #294
andrewstuart wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely this is failure. Twitter/threads is (or should be) a highly viral application. New users should find themselves compelled to use the product and compelled to encourage others to use it. With a 100 million user head start, if they were succeeding this shoukd have immediately resulted in the viral loop being triggered into explosive growth. It’s a huge failure. Not necessarily unrecoverable, but absolutely a…

People in here are emotionally invested in seeing Musk fail, no amount of reasoning can make them see the forrest from the trees.

> People in here are emotionally invested in seeing Musk fail, no amount of reasoning can make them see the forrest from the trees.

The same statement holds for Mark Zuckerberg. ;-) (EDIT: and perhaps also Steve Huffman)

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#392

Post by aleph_minus_one »

fivre wrote: post #283
AlexandrB wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, Mastodon was going to be the new place. It wasn't. Just about all the people whose opinions I'm interested in hearing are on Mastodon now. I don't really care if anyone else shows up. Maybe it's better that they don't.

you're here, and your old blog is about tech stuff, so there's a decent chance you follow a lot of tech people. there are plenty of _those_ on mastodon, because tech people will suffer through bad UX if the product has certain qualities that that community values (federation being the big one in this case) that doesn't hold for other groups. people that don't want to think about internet application protocols (most p…

> that doesn't hold for other groups. people that don't want to think about internet application protocols

It is a startup wisdom that it is better to have less users who love your product than many who merely like it. Tech-savy people often have a strong opinions (both positive and negative). By the mentioned startup wisdom, it can be very valuable to have them as users.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#393

Post by TX81Z »

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.

Yea, this is a truly impressive launch. If even 25% of people who logged in just to see the new shiny thing stuck around and became a DAU that’s utterly remarkable. This framing is absurdist.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#394

Post by _ea1k »

Where are all the articles questioning Zuckerberg's sanity because of all his bad decisions that led to this?

I know that they'd be mostly false, but we get those about that other site, so why not about Threads?

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#395

Post by XorNot »

anifru wrote: post #72
lopkeny12ko wrote: post #67

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.

"Users" yes, but that's not why Twitter was "big" (in quotes because, by user base, Twitter wasn't big at all).

Twitter's cultural cachet was because you could link and embed Tweets. Whatever platform you're on, viewing things on Twitter "just works" if you have a URL. That means journalists can point to things on Twitter, post things on Twitter, and the normal mechanisms of internet virality mean they can spread through basically any medium (i.e. how many times are Twitter links shown on other platforms?)

It's also worth noting that "influencer" types don't - or didn't - use Twitter directly. They used various bits of API management software to curate their appearance.

Threads has none of that: without a web browser experience, you can't share and link things on Threads in other mediums. There's no possibility of embedded Threads posts being a thing. And that means, fundamentally, Threads can never actually pull sign-ups by organic virality - or pull views from it either. It's notable the big sign up wave happened right as it looked like Twitter was going to block viewing Tweets for users without an account - that was (correctly) interpreted as the final nail in the coffin (and was rolled back).

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#396

Post by aleph_minus_one »

Tao3300 wrote: post #320
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…

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

> We're supposed to be xing and rexing our xs on x now.

Relevant: https://www.xing.com/

(a site very similar so LinkedIn that rather has its mainstay in the German-speaking market instead of a more international focus like LinkedIn)

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#397

Post by robgibbons »

pohl wrote: post #377
dahwolf wrote: post #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…

they just leech We prefer the verb “lurk”. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lurker

Yep. Leeching is mostly used in the context of torrents. Generally, while you're downloading, you're "leeching." But also, if you don't seed a file after you download it, you can call that leeching.

Lurking is when you frequent a forum but never post.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#398

Post by wilsynet »

pohl wrote: post #377
dahwolf wrote: post #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…

they just leech We prefer the verb “lurk”. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lurker

To lurk, to be in the state of lurking, and to be a lurker — has been around since the BBS days. Thanks for calling it out!

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#399

Post by wilsynet »

robgibbons wrote: post #397
pohl wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they just leech We prefer the verb “lurk”. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lurker

Yep. Leeching is mostly used in the context of torrents. Generally, while you're downloading, you're "leeching." But also, if you don't seed a file after you download it, you can call that leeching. Lurking is when you frequent a forum but never post.

To leech, leeching and to be a leecher has been around since people used to download warez. It far predates torrents.

I remember a local sysop in the 80s who ran an Apple II ASCII Express download site with two 5.25” floppy drives. You’d write him a text message and save it as a file. He was a cab driver and he’d come back home once in awhile and check the messages. If you were lucky he’d put your requested software in the second drive and maybe you’d check back in time before he fulfilled someone else’s request.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#400

Post by jhatemyjob »

ramesh31 wrote: post #28

As the dust is settling on the last 15 years of this insanity, and the monopolies are being cemented, is Zuck not the only one left standing independently? Of the big guys, the early "wizkid founder" types, who else is left towing the line and controlling the destiny of their company? And who else is maintaining that techno-utopianist optimism publicly? I sort of admire the guy, if only for how every time he speaks,…

There are others. Zuck has leverage over Facebook so he stays. The others have leverage over other institutions.
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