Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Instagram Threads triples downloads in December, reaching top; X falls to #36

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 91 posts

Re: Instagram Threads triples downloads in December, reaching top; X falls to #36

#21

Post by thedaly »

monetus wrote: post #20
thedaly wrote: post #13

Who is downloading threads? Haven't read or heard any talk on it in months. To be fair, I am far removed from the meta ecosystem.

The most obvious answer is people who can't stand Tucker Carlson or Alex Jones types. Lots of high profile political accounts have moved over from X. In the politics vein, lots of Ukrainian and Ukraine watchers as well, oddly enough. Aside from that, some machine learning accounts are pretty decent and have a growing community. - my 2¢

This may be a dumb question, but wouldn't one only see that content if they engage with it or follow people who engage with it?

Re: Instagram Threads triples downloads in December, reaching top; X falls to #36

#22

Post by tracerbulletx »

ncphillips wrote: post #3

Google+ also had enormous early growth, but I don’t know anyone who used it beyond a test run. So far it’s been the same with Threads in my circle. Does downloads really tell us much or is it just a vanity metric?

The difference is this is tightly coupled with Instagram which is one of the most active networks already and they can easily cross pollinate the two for a long time and keep sucking up people who get fed up with Twitter.

Re: Instagram Threads triples downloads in December, reaching top; X falls to #36

#23

Post by thedaly »

gcau wrote: post #16

Nobody I know/see in my social circles has ever linked to threads or really ever talked about it, in contrast everyone is linking tweets fairly often and X/twitter gets mentioned often. Just my observation.

Yeah, now that I think about it, I never see any screenshots on reddit either. I see tons from twitter.

Re: Instagram Threads triples downloads in December, reaching top; X falls to #36

#24

Post by fortran77 »

I have accounts on all of the X competitors, from Bluesky to Threads. I'd love there to be exciting communities there!

And yet I still come back to X. Execpt for some niche communities that have settled in them, they seem like ghosttowns.

Re: Instagram Threads triples downloads in December, reaching top; X falls to #36

#25

Post by refulgentis »

ncphillips wrote: post #3

Google+ also had enormous early growth, but I don’t know anyone who used it beyond a test run. So far it’s been the same with Threads in my circle. Does downloads really tell us much or is it just a vanity metric?

Yeah there was a certain set of news events that happened over the past couple months that turned X into a cesspool of people intentionally baiting each other and refusing to listen or show humanity.

Anecdotally Twitter traffic went _way_ down between 12/14 to 1/14. Seemed like a lot of people went on holiday vacation and didn't feel the need to come back.

Re: Instagram Threads triples downloads in December, reaching top; X falls to #36

#26

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

thedaly wrote: post #21
monetus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most obvious answer is people who can't stand Tucker Carlson or Alex Jones types. Lots of high profile political accounts have moved over from X. In the politics vein, lots of Ukrainian and Ukraine watchers as well, oddly enough. Aside from that, some machine learning accounts are pretty decent and have a growing community. - my 2¢

This may be a dumb question, but wouldn't one only see that content if they engage with it or follow people who engage with it?

An algorithmic feed of posts and replies within a post means that you see whatever an optimization function thinks will maximize revenue and engagement. And people on both sides fall for the bait and engage when they're shown what they disagree with.

Re: Instagram Threads triples downloads in December, reaching top; X falls to #36

#28

Post by lexandstuff »

I really love Threads personally. I find it more chilled than Twitter but not as boring as Mastodon. The engagement I get is much, much higher than what I get on Twitter and the vibe seems friendlier.

My major complaint is none of the AI community are on it, aside from Meta researchers.

Re: Instagram Threads triples downloads in December, reaching top; X falls to #36

#29

Post by samtheprogram »

MattGaiser wrote: post #5
ncphillips wrote: post #3

Google+ also had enormous early growth, but I don’t know anyone who used it beyond a test run. So far it’s been the same with Threads in my circle. Does downloads really tell us much or is it just a vanity metric?

In my social sphere, most just used it as a test run, but then Twitter became a centre of rage, violence, and politics that the more apolitical ones are spending more time on Threads.

In my experience it’s not quite the opposite but quite different.

Twitter is fine for apolitical people. They don’t follow the politics. And then Twitter is fine for people of a certain political leaning.

Everything else in this space is for people who are political + left enough to want to leave Twitter because they follow enough political things to be annoyed at all.

Re: Instagram Threads triples downloads in December, reaching top; X falls to #36

#30

Post by mullingitover »

Data point: I've been using threads since day one and deleted Twitter in day 2. Once every couple weeks or so I'll check out Twitter, but I've been on threads daily and haven't felt like I was missing anything.

Twitter isn't dead, but the core user group has obviously plateaued.

Post reply on HN