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How the new Threads app is made

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Re: How the new Threads app is made

#131

Post by technion »

hyperhopper wrote: post #113
yeeetz wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I don't fuck with social media that much besides my private Instagram, but there's more to it than just viral marketing. It's a pretty smooth app that appeals to people like my 18-25-ish age that feels like Twitter has gotten super weird and toxic. The honeymoon effect won't last forever, but it has something that a lot of social media users are looking for.

But why didn't those users just go to mastodon?

A friend of mine tried mastodon on my recommendation. But he couldn't find a "login with facebook" button, which is how he assesses whether a website is trustworthy. Mastodon to him is "like a scam version of threads". You'd be surprised how prevalent this view is with normal non-hn crowd.

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#132

Post by dahwolf »

sushid wrote: post #35
dahwolf wrote: post #33

[flagged]

> Which has an obnoxious, superficial, bottom of the barrel culture. Cheap, narcissistic, lacking any depth. Ah yes, very different from the core Twitter userbase. /s

That is the point I was making, it's the worst of both worlds.

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#133

Post by 0xDEF »

yeeetz wrote: post #103
ryandrake wrote: post #96

I'm kind of amazed at how saturated the news is with stories about Threads. And not just tech news, but also every mainstream news site has at least one or more "submarine" marketing articles promoting Threads. Meta Marketing Team: You're not fooling anyone into thinking these are grassroots and viral, but honestly, well done with the media saturation. Meta's clearly got all the right channels on full-blast. It's rea…

Honestly I don't fuck with social media that much besides my private Instagram, but there's more to it than just viral marketing. It's a pretty smooth app that appeals to people like my 18-25-ish age that feels like Twitter has gotten super weird and toxic. The honeymoon effect won't last forever, but it has something that a lot of social media users are looking for.

>Twitter has gotten super weird and toxic

This is correct but it's helpful to specify how much more toxic twitter has become than other platforms.

For example anti-LGBT sentiments are common on other platforms just like they are common in society. But on twitter people like Jake Shields literally call for the murder of therapists, doctors, and teachers who are supportive of LGBT teens. How did twitter respond? First they let the tweets get thousands of engagements. Then they removed the tweets without banning Shields. Finally they removed other people's tweets, archive links, and screenshots documenting Shields' hate speech. Jake Shields is still on twitter pushing toxic lies and disinfo.

TL;DR: Elon Musk's twitter protects people who want to murder doctors and teachers.

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#134

Post by dahwolf »

hotdogscout wrote: post #46
dahwolf wrote: post #33

[flagged]

short form social media is an industrial farm of mental illness. it surrounds you with histrionics with all the time possible to spare, minimal commitment and inundates your monkey-brained need for peer approval with their low standards. leaving leftist online spaces was the decision that had the most positive impact on my life. any community based around a struggle will have a hard time not being a pit of vindictive…

Fully agree. I'm center-left myself in the European political spectrum and cannot stand the leftist vibe, so gloomy, self-congratulating, fake.

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#135

Post by wlesieutre »

PaulHoule wrote: post #110
yeeetz wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I don't fuck with social media that much besides my private Instagram, but there's more to it than just viral marketing. It's a pretty smooth app that appeals to people like my 18-25-ish age that feels like Twitter has gotten super weird and toxic. The honeymoon effect won't last forever, but it has something that a lot of social media users are looking for.

The real market is for brands, they can't stand the insanity on Twitter. I think of Musk's idea of turning Twitter into a super app. Well, if I go into a business and somebody asks me to pay with Twitter that business is going to be associated with Musk, Twitter, and all that. If the business is selling anti-woke razor blades it might be a good fit, but an ordinary business just doesn't want to be associated with tha…

I can just imagine it, “spend $500/month with Twitter Pay and you get a green checkmark, promoting your tweets even above the already promoted blue checkmark tweeters”

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#136

Post by pests »

TheHappyOddish wrote: post #130
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think over time HN has become more like a lot of other tech communities; a bit ideological, zealous, and detached. Most of these groups have ingroups (the virtuous hackers) and outgroups (CIA, NSA, RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, Big Tech, Social Media, techbros, billionaires, .) This is the kind of community you'll find in a lot of FSF mailing lists, Libera (formerly Freenode) channels, and Linux subreddits. Threads, being…

My less cynical viewpoint is that it just isn't that interesting. It's a bare-bones Twitter clone made by Meta. There's no interesting new technology to discuss, no open source angle, no discussion on the company founder that hasn't been done 100 times. HN has plenty of discussions about interesting Meta projects - Quest, React, the metaverse, financial discussions, etc. I just don't think there's much to grip people…

Hasn't Threads been around for awhile? I thought I ran across it when browsing Facebook's store page on one of the app stores and saw it a long time ago.

Regardless I do think its funny that Facebook had photos but Instagram is still a product and now Facebook has always had status updates and now Threads is a product. Facebook is almost just a mashup of Instagram + Threads. Or in a way some demographic of users liked a Facebook experience but for photos only (Instagram) and another set of users liked a Facebook experience but for status updates only (Threads).

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#137

Post by nvr219 »

itsmartapuntocm wrote: post #119
hyperhopper wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why didn't those users just go to mastodon?

The narrative had already been seeded that mastodon is too fractured/difficult. And Threads has the momentum of Facebook/Instagram pushing it forward.

The narrative is right though.

Here is a common thing that happens to me:

- someone sends me a funny post

- I want to "like" it or save it or whatever

On Twitter and other centralized social media this is very easy to do. On Mastodon, it is not. I have to copy the URL, paste it into a text field on my instance, and then like it.

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#138

Post by tw04 »

ryandrake wrote: post #96

I'm kind of amazed at how saturated the news is with stories about Threads. And not just tech news, but also every mainstream news site has at least one or more "submarine" marketing articles promoting Threads. Meta Marketing Team: You're not fooling anyone into thinking these are grassroots and viral, but honestly, well done with the media saturation. Meta's clearly got all the right channels on full-blast. It's rea…

I can't necessarily disagree, but even if Meta wasn't marketing, Twitter suing less than 24 hours after launch meant it was going to be front page news for at least a couple days.

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#139

Post by 0xDEF »

enahs-sf wrote: post #57

can someone explain to me why this is a separate app and not just a view in Instagram? IG has the potential to be Meta's Wechat and this seems like it does that journey a disservice.

The EU will never let "Meta's WeChat" become a thing. That is a good thing.

Re: How the new Threads app is made

#140

Post by stavros »

yamazakiwi wrote: post #93
jheriko wrote: post #82

amazing how massive they made it with so little functionality classic shitware

This comment reminds me of when American based AAA game studios were mad about Elden Ring's success. What functionality is missing that you would add?

It's not about what functionality is missing, it's about what's there. 250 MB to show you a list of text posts and comments? Why is it so big? What does it do to warrant that?
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