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Threads, an Instagram app

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Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#281

Post by lxgr »

frogulis wrote: post #165
rayxi271828 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope Threads won't exhibit the same hostility towards the users as IG does. (What's up with IG and its hostile UX? Videos can't be fast forwarded or tracked at all, profile pictures can't be zoomed, clicking on it brings you to stories, images can't be copied easily, etc.)

Videos not being trackable is such a perplexing one. Is it intended to keep the user watching longer by forcing them to re-watch the whole video if they want to see something again?

Given that Youtube copied it for their "shorts" clone of TikTok/Reels, it must be working for the platforms...

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#282

Post by snowwrestler »

stubybubs wrote: post #183
john_max_1 wrote: post #172

When was the last time, Facebook launched a successful standalone product? - WhatsApp - acqusition - Instagram - acquistion - Messenger - acquisition - Oculus - acquisition Facebook has DNA to optimize feeds. It, simply, lack the DNA to build good products from scratch. My gut feeling no one will care about Threads, 6 months from now. EDIT: - Facebook was all-in on cryptocurrencies. The project is fully gone. - Faceb…

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.

Groups has also slowly become a killer feature of FB. There are very strong niche communities there; it’s a direct competitor to Reddit in that way. It’s pretty much the only reason I keep opening the FB app, but it is enough to keep me opening it.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#283

Post by tedunangst »

w-m wrote: post #18

Any guesses on how much you'll be able to read, when following a link with a Desktop browser? Half a thread, or more? Before the inevitable full-page login overlay hits you straight in the face, as they always tend to do.

When, or if, they support activitypub you'll be able to read posts in the json viewer of your choice.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#284

Post by jitl »

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

The new Twitter Blue subscription revenue is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the advertising loss and the debt he saddled the company with.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#285

Post by coolandsmartrr »

spike021 wrote: post #233
coolandsmartrr wrote: post #130

Reminds me of how Instagram absorbed Snapchat usecases with stories. Instagram tackled the competition for ephemeral stories simply by implementing Stories as a feature. This time, Threads is a fully fledged app. Getting users to adopt a new app might take as much time as getting Messenger installed. Still, Instagram has a robust social graph to lead users towards downloading it. In fact, they seem to have already on…

I'm really interested in seeing what my Japanese friends do. I don't live in Japan but have made a bunch of friends there in my travels. They're super active on Twitter for baseball and car discussion. Hoping they make the jump, honestly. At least if this app is good.

Twitter is a much better social network in Japanese than in English. You are more likely to encounter people who want to discuss hobbies than being trolls. I think they'll stick to the end, just like the Titanic.

Making the jump seems a little challenging right now. Some Japanese people have tried Truth Social, even dominating the trends with Japanese keywords. I'm not sure if they'll stick there given its context with American politics.

As Twitter became popular in Japan with the 2011 Earthquake, the migration to Threads might be another earthquake away (which happens often here).[1]

I wonder who will be the core users of Threads in Japan. Twitter was popular among nerdy "Otakus" who often engaged in anime, gaming, or electronics. Facebook/Instagram always tended to be avoided by that demographics. Instead, Instagram in Japan is popular among young women, who post selfies or food pics. However, I'm not sure if they'll be receptive to a text-focused service.

[1] Side-anecdote: Twitter is the best earthquake detector. Whenever you feel a shake, Twitter users will confirm it sooner than traditional news sources.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#286

Post by gochi »

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.

It's not a large team, and it's very barebones in terms of features, like DMs. They also weren't ready for the small boom in users trying to sign up the other day, so networking is still a concern for them. Also they haven't been working directly on the app itself this entire time, they also created a new protocol due to Jack's desire to re-evaluate everything rather than "create a twitter clone".

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#287

Post by rchaud »

astrange wrote: post #270
rchaud wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Twitter was making $4bn a year, that they couldn't turn a profit on that doesn't mean it wasn't lucrative.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#288

Post by gremlinsinc »

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…

Whatever Twitter is now, it's hardly a social network. Zuck sucks for many reasons but if anyone can beat Musk to replace Twitter it'd be Meta... this is their core focus area. I doubt they'll ever become the metaverse apple/unicorn they want to be.

FB recently has been gaining some good will in dev communities if only for open sourcing llama and some other ai models.

My point is, the paywall will kill Twitter, with or without a competitor to step in and replace them.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#289

Post by worrycue »

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.

They are rate limiting the viewing of tweets now. No way they have the capacity to handle Reddit’s content.

Maybe Google can try replicating Reddit in YouTube - it would just be serving text instead of video; discovery would be via their recommendation algorithm, i.e. no subreddits. Frankly, they can kind of already do this, you can post community messages on YouTube. They just need to tweak the algorithm to recommend such messages.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#290

Post by astrange »

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

The economy is in great shape despite how many people try to cope a recession into existence. ("Inflation" is a bad thing that can only happen in a good economy.)

He bought the company because he was mad they banned a hate speech account he thought was funny, unbanned them and brought all the other racists back to juice the numbers and so he could reply-guy them, and instantly lost all the advertisers because they don't want to be associated with statue avatar Nazis. That was not good business sense.

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