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

Threads, an Instagram app

apps.apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 1001 posts

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#261

Post by gremlinsinc »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #185
danShumway wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are bootstrapping new social networks by mass-scraping Twitter data I am 99% sure that this is not a real thing and that you're using all of these words incorrectly. When was Substack illegally scraping Twitter data? What Twitter data is being used to bootstrap Threads?

> When was Substack illegally scraping Twitter data? https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1644638493883211779 > What Twitter data is being used to bootstrap Threads? I have no proof of this. It's just speculation. I also don't have an iDevice so I can't install the app and look for myself. But the timing of Twitter's rate limiting this week, combined with Elon's clarification that Twitter data is being mass-scraped, c…

actually it can, because threads has probably been in development for months? I doubt Zuck put it together since Friday. Most likely he knew Elon musk is an idiot who doesn't know the first thing about social media companies and has created a power vacuum for a Twitter like app, and now there's one for a Reddit like app..

If someone could marry the two, in a non profit Wikipedia sort of way, with decent Democratic way to moderate and vote on new features etc, we could kill two birds with one stone and replace both Twitter and Reddit.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#262

Post by astrange »

skiman10 wrote: post #232
delecti wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I think this succeeds or fails based on the ability to follow different kinds of things from users separately. If I can follow someone's Threads and not their Reels, I'd be glad to have such an easy migration path off of Twitter (I'm having a lot of fun on bluesky, but it's not ready). I'm not optimistic about that though, because you already can't choose to not follow reels separately from pictures.

I never got a Bluesky invite and I've seen a couple comments mentioning "it's not ready" so I'm wondering why people keep saying that? It has been in development for a while, so I would assume it is ready at this point in time.

If it was ready I assume they'd take the invite wall down.

I haven't got one either yet so don't know its state.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#263

Post by sixQuarks »

mullingitover wrote: post #93

I'm calling it now, this is going to hollow out twitter in extremely rapid fashion. I give twitter a couple of months once this launches, they'll do a Wile E Coyote where they walk off the cliff, followed by plummeting. Meta is going to grind the blue bird to a fine powder, not saying this as a Meta fan, just a casual observer. There's massive pent-up demand for an alternative, and so far Bluesky and Mastodon haven't…

Couldn’t disagree with you more. Threads will be a flop.

The accounts that are most active/followed on Twitter are not the type of people that have Instagram accounts.

People with large followings are not going to simply switch, no matter how much they hate Elon.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#264

Post by okwubodu »

john_max_1 wrote: post #199
stubybubs wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketplace dominates used goods in my area. I don't think it matters that it's not "standalone," it was a new area and they grabbed the market share. Running threads off IG has a good shot too.

That was a natural extension to Facebook conversations and was not a standalone product.

This is functionally an extension of Instagram. It’s no more standalone than, say, Messenger.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#265

Post by nemothekid »

hiisukun wrote: post #243

Maybe I missed something, but what's the equivalent of subreddits on Threads? I can see how I might discover posts from users that I follow or like -- but I actually don't ever do that on reddit. I just occasionally visit subreddits of topics that interest me, and that's a loose collection of users/content based on geography or interest or otherwise. I feel like hashtags (where you can put them on any message you wan…

I'm pretty sure Threads is a replacement for Twitter, not Reddit

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#266

Post by photonerd »

BasedAnon wrote: post #95
photonerd wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been known to be coming for quite a while, so it’s probably just opportune timing on their part being close enough to ready to ship. But hooooly crap does it underscore how much of a catastrophe Musk’s actions are.

Musk's actions generally speaking make a lot of financial sense, it's just that he bought a company that wasn't founded on financial sense, and now all that debt requires payment because the economy is in tatters

His actions make zero financial sense. He bought it 30-40% overvalued, has tanked its income, destroyed its brand reputation, absolutely set fire to advertiser trust & safety.

Most estimates put it at ~25% of the value he paid 7 months ago.

All the debt you mention? He saddled them with that. That was t there until he came along. Another failure.

About the only positive financial thing you can say he did is cut payroll costs. Unfortunately he did that at the expense of site stability & reliability.

It will be studied in MBA programs as an example of what NOT to do

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#267

Post by astrange »

interestica wrote: post #194
mullingitover wrote: post #93

I'm calling it now, this is going to hollow out twitter in extremely rapid fashion. I give twitter a couple of months once this launches, they'll do a Wile E Coyote where they walk off the cliff, followed by plummeting. Meta is going to grind the blue bird to a fine powder, not saying this as a Meta fan, just a casual observer. There's massive pent-up demand for an alternative, and so far Bluesky and Mastodon haven't…

I feel like Twitter could have launched “Nests” (flocks?) to replace subreddits in the face of a Reddit exodus and pretty much just reskinned twitter for the specific use case. Hashtags as top level organizing taxonomy (to replace subreddit). Then tweets as your “posts” with nested replies. Twitter had the infrastructure to just hit the ground running too.

Nobody uses hashtags anymore. You can actually tell when someone is a clueless LinkedIn refugee because they hashtag random words in their sentences.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#268

Post by gochi »

afavour wrote: post #234
mullingitover wrote: post #93

I'm calling it now, this is going to hollow out twitter in extremely rapid fashion. I give twitter a couple of months once this launches, they'll do a Wile E Coyote where they walk off the cliff, followed by plummeting. Meta is going to grind the blue bird to a fine powder, not saying this as a Meta fan, just a casual observer. There's massive pent-up demand for an alternative, and so far Bluesky and Mastodon haven't…

I couldn't disagree more. I don't see any sign Meta understands what made Twitter great, and the fact that they're heavily branding it with Instagram, using Instagram logins etc suggests to me that they're just looking for another angle to vacuum up user data. Maybe I'm unusual but the accounts I follow on Instagram and Twitter do not have a huge amount of crossover so the fact that their onboarding process tries to…

There's two channels here. From a user perspective "what made Twitter great" is also the least attractive parts for any other company to try and mimic. The absurd levels of pornography, the anonymous fan and joke accounts. From a business perspective, "what made Twitter great" was the easy to digest brands, the non-anonymous accounts sharing their day, and journalists/other named professionals providing up to date information directly without the need to learn how to video/image edit.

Meta does not understand the former, but they certainly do understand the latter. It's all they care about, and why they're bothering with this. It's certainly not out of a desire to replace Twitter for the goodness of their hearts, no they want the valuable aspects of Twitter.

I don't see how Twitter, without making any serious changes, will become anything more than a wasteland of people too crude for Threads but also too illiterate for Mastodon.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#269

Post by rhaway84773 »

afavour wrote: post #234
mullingitover wrote: post #93

I'm calling it now, this is going to hollow out twitter in extremely rapid fashion. I give twitter a couple of months once this launches, they'll do a Wile E Coyote where they walk off the cliff, followed by plummeting. Meta is going to grind the blue bird to a fine powder, not saying this as a Meta fan, just a casual observer. There's massive pent-up demand for an alternative, and so far Bluesky and Mastodon haven't…

I couldn't disagree more. I don't see any sign Meta understands what made Twitter great, and the fact that they're heavily branding it with Instagram, using Instagram logins etc suggests to me that they're just looking for another angle to vacuum up user data. Maybe I'm unusual but the accounts I follow on Instagram and Twitter do not have a huge amount of crossover so the fact that their onboarding process tries to…

I think the Instagram branding is deliberate.

Instagram is not a heavy political brand. This will attract the less controversial groups )like bird watchers) that generate great revenue while keeping out the controversial political ones that are massive money pits.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#270

Post by astrange »

rchaud wrote: post #167
elforce002 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time will tell. The issue is not scalability. The main issue is conflict. Twitter has both sides there. Truth social is not mainstream even if the main actor is posting every day. Same goes for the other side. There's also social media fatigue. Tiktok came with something "new" and it's growing because of that. Twitter is trying to move into yt space. Fb is trying to stay relevant in anything related to their core bus…

I think political content has run its course as a source of eyeballs. Politicians engaging with people was novel in the 2008-12 " hope and change/Arab Spring" era. It's since been gamified and weaponized for electoral gain. The algorithms pushed it too hard and monetized division to the point where all but the most addicted people have tuned out.

I don't think "monetizing" is the right word because if that was happening, they'd be making money, which they aren't.
Post reply on HN