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

Threads users down by more than a half

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 566 posts

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#171

Post by curiousllama »

spansoa wrote: post #95
skc wrote: post #32

Threads will be alright in the end. They launched it at a very opportune time when Twitter was having massive technical issues. That was enough to get millions of people to kick the tires and more importantly, create awareness. The next time Twitter goes down, and it will any day now, people will again flock to Threads and notice that it got a little better. Twitter will get fixed again, and a lower percentage of Thr…

And when it hits the E.U market Threads will gain more popularity. If they can just sort out the 'privacy problem' they apparently have. I don't understand the delay here. FB & Insta already has E.U people's data.

If I understand correctly, the DMA says you can’t leverage one social network to support another (ie, you can’t drive Threads signups via the IG Network).

Meta chose quick growth over European users.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#172

Post by rumblerock »

adam_arthur wrote: post #107

Threads launched without the ability to only see the people you follow. To me that marked it as doomed from the start. Most people use Twitter to follow specific niches or topic areas, not as a general conversational platform. If I follow even one account that's posting low quality content at any sort of frequency, it seriously degrades the experience. It's really a headscratcher how they launched without that. I gue…

I was enjoying the first few days and went on a campaign to mute as many of these low quality accounts that had been ported in from Instagram as possible.

Then I just got bored, and realized it was just reclaiming the time that I had gained by quitting Instagram in the first place.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#173

Post by karaterobot »

In my experience, which I hope is not that unusual, it's pretty typical for at least half the people who sign up on launch to not come back. A lot of people just want to check it out. I do notice that we are not told how much less than half of the people stayed, though...

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#174

Post by zerocrates »

jonathankoren wrote: post #105
zerocrates wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that even without the ability to really use it on the web, Threads already has a better anonymous-user web view than Twitter. Since the recent changes, on Twitter you can't see replies if you're linked to a tweet while not logged in, and you don't even have any indicator that replies exist and that you could see them with an account. The whole implementation of the changes in that area is a real baffler.

"Already?" Elon broke Twitter's anonymous view just this month? Seriously dude. It takes more effort to break the web than just use it.

I'm just pointing out that it's been broken to a state where even an app-centric thing like Threads, spun off from web- and anonymous-hostile Instagram no less, is a better experience to link to.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#175

Post by marcosdumay »

operatingthetan wrote: post #9

This is being reported in a strange way. We don't typically write about startups gaining initial signups and then compare them to the active users as if they lost something by not getting 100% of them to engage. Do we even have numbers for what percent of twitter users actively engage versus total user base? I don't think they are doing very bad considering it's mobile only right now.

We don't expect the number of active users to ever fall in an startup.

You are correct in that this was unavoidable because the original number was artificially inflated in a non-sustainable way. But well, that would be a huge red flag for a startup too. It is less so for a giant company like Meta, as they can eat the loss from forcing the market, but it is still ridiculous, even for a company as large as Meta.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#176

Post by foogazi »

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…

> Threads failed the smell test early on because it started out with algorithmic feed only

On it’s first fucking day

Been using the new follow feed and honestly I appreciate the algo feed sprinkling some randomness here and there

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#177

Post by timeon »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #130

- Not letting you see just posts from your follows sucked. - Building up a good group of people to follow takes a long time - A lot of the people who I follow on Instagram I do not want to follow on Twitter. - Just felt like an inorganic extension of Instagram. Like the difference between a fake real estate developer created neighborhood and a real one.

> Not letting you see just posts from your follows sucked

This is why I stopped using Instagram. I have been there since around 2010. Moment when I realized it's waste of time was when feed contained content I did not followed while missing some that I followed.

Irony is that pre-2010 I was proponent of algorithmic feed. Young and naive.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#178

Post by justapassenger »

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.

Failing?

You do realize that even after the 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 lunch?

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#179

Post by dmix »

medler wrote: post #75
throwaway-243 wrote: post #68

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.

One thing that’s impossible to ignore is that Twitter now forces you to read bad replies. Before, it would rank the most popular replies near the top, but now you have to scroll past lots of low-quality replies from people who are boosted just because they pay for the privilege.

I use Twitter daily and unless you're looking at major threads (like an Elon tweet) it's rarely more than a single verified user (if at all). And they are rarely better/worse than the average Tweet normally is in those mega threads.

It's got downsides for sure but I hasn't killed the UX IMO

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#180

Post by justapassenger »

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.

Post reply on HN