Threads now reaches more than 130M monthly users, up 30M from Q3 • Hacker News Board

jader201 wrote: post #6

I forget completely about Threads, until about every 3 months when an article about it pops up on HN. I don’t know where these 30M users are, but none of them are anybody in my work/family/friends circle. And very little chatter about it here on HN either. I know literally zero people using it, or at the very least talking about using it or sharing stories from it.

HN users have long been calling Facebook a dead platform because none of their contacts are there. Yet FB has 130M dau in north America. Threads will be fine too.

Re: Threads now reaches more than 130M monthly users, up 30M from Q3

#15

Post by sgc » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 3:43 AM UTC

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #3

It’s gotta be the in-feed Threads carousels in Instagram, I have to give Meta credit, that’s a great way to get people into the threads app. I’m also finding more of the people I liked from Twitter on Threads now. It’s nice to have that corner of the internet back again.

I am limping along on the last gasp of nitter until threads is big enough I can get breaking news from there. Hopefully we reach the tipping point before nitter gives out forever.

Re: Threads now reaches more than 130M monthly users, up 30M from Q3

#16

Post by fragmede » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 3:44 AM UTC

sirpunch wrote: post #14

jader201 wrote: post #6

I forget completely about Threads, until about every 3 months when an article about it pops up on HN. I don’t know where these 30M users are, but none of them are anybody in my work/family/friends circle. And very little chatter about it here on HN either. I know literally zero people using it, or at the very least talking about using it or sharing stories from it.

HN users have long been calling Facebook a dead platform because none of their contacts are there. Yet FB has 130M dau in north America. Threads will be fine too.

not only that, they just posted a great quarter and their stock's taken a jump on that news.

Re: Threads now reaches more than 130M monthly users, up 30M from Q3

#17

Post by xyst » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 3:46 AM UTC

has threads fully adopted activitypub? wonder how they are controlling bad instances from flooding the feed, maybe they just do not federate?

Also last time I checked, most of the popular mastodon (and Lemmy?) instances were planning to block threads all together. Not sure what became of it though.

Re: Threads now reaches more than 130M monthly users, up 30M from Q3

#18

Post by s1mon » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 3:48 AM UTC

Threads would be much better if it had the algorithm of TikTok.

Basic things like I scroll through Threads on my iPhone (while logged into my account) and then I do the same on my iPad and it shows me the same posts. WTF?!? Keeping track of what I've read (or at least scrolled past) is really basic and has been part of email, newsgroups, etc. for decades.

TikTok does this pretty well but it is also pathologically good at picking new things based on your viewing habits. It has a huge advantage over Threads (and Facebook, Instagram, X, etc) in that TikTok only presents one thing at a time to the user. If I flick it away in a fraction of a second, it shows that something has triggered me (boredom, disgust, etc) to move to the next thing. If I watch one clip multiple times and/or dig into the comments or other clips from the same creator, or even follow a creator, chances are I want to see more of that and/or more like that. I'm sure it's more complex, but there's a lot of feedback to the algorithm there. Facebook and Instagram try to learn from the "more..." buttons that expand comments, but it's not really the same level of information.

As it stands, the discovery process on Threads is no where near as compelling as it is on TikTok.

Re: Threads now reaches more than 130M monthly users, up 30M from Q3

#19

Post by sgc » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 3:49 AM UTC

wly_cdgr wrote: post #13

[flagged]

I am not there for the sex. I want a solid information platform that is real time and a lot of people use. That obviously means they invest in anti-propaganda and brigading tech. Hopefully it is not too flashy and stays out of my way, and the search / curation features (like twitter lists) work enough that they are not a point of friction. There is still obvious work to be done, but it is on a good trajectory for now.

Re: Threads now reaches more than 130M monthly users, up 30M from Q3

#20

Post by CharlesW » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 3:50 AM UTC

xyst wrote: post #17

has threads fully adopted activitypub? wonder how they are controlling bad instances from flooding the feed, maybe they just do not federate? Also last time I checked, most of the popular mastodon (and Lemmy?) instances were planning to block threads all together. Not sure what became of it though.

Here's Adam Mosseri's (Threads Head) update from 7 weeks ago: https://www.threads.net/@mosseri/post/C046LSmPAuN