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Threads, an Instagram app

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Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#471

Post by abledon »

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…

React & LLAMA are their best products, ironically only for developers, not the general population.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#473

Post by russ »

interestica wrote: post #385
russ wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, I built this exact thing as a 120% project at Twitter in 2011. It was called “Flocks”. It even had transient/temporal flocks based on geo check-in and sound-fingerprint flocks for movies, tv shows, and events. We implemented the Shazam audio signature algo from a research paper we found. The thesis was: it’s more natural for people to have conversations when there’s a shared context. It became a widely known pro…

Lol that’s amazing. They could have even now done tongue-in-cheek marketing and straight up call it a “migration”. Also, “nest-ed comments” on different “branches”. You could work backwards and find the bird-related concept and then build the correspond technology? What would “feathers” be?

Hah! Working backwards would yield some hits for sure.

“Feather” (a play off a quill) was my prototype (I built a lot of prototypes there in my “spare” time :)) for a richer, write/tweet only app. You could author long-form content, quickly jump into the camera for recording video or taking a picture (goal: frictionless citizen journalism), and other stuff. I wanted to build a delightful tweeting experience and at the time, it felt like the mobile implementation was just yanked wholesale from Web.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#474

Post by abledon »

adventured wrote: post #146
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.

> But hooooly crap does it underscore how much of a catastrophe Musk’s actions are I think that pretty much nails it. This is Zuckerberg's life - social media & nearby segments - and he's still in his prime (very active, attentive to threats / paranoid) as a competitor in the business sphere. If you give him an opening to cripple Twitter opportunistically, he's going to take a shot. Did Musk think Twitter actually ha…

> Did Musk think Twitter actually had a moat

Yes, first mover advantage. I don't think normal non-technically inclined people are going to move their twitter activities to "Threads".

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#475

Post by russ »

pschuegr wrote: post #371
russ wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, I built this exact thing as a 120% project at Twitter in 2011. It was called “Flocks”. It even had transient/temporal flocks based on geo check-in and sound-fingerprint flocks for movies, tv shows, and events. We implemented the Shazam audio signature algo from a research paper we found. The thesis was: it’s more natural for people to have conversations when there’s a shared context. It became a widely known pro…

That sounds really cool, you were basically (my translation) auto-creating sub-reddits based on the media people were consuming at the time? Sweet project.

Yeah! Wanted a really fast/frictionless way for people to jump into a context based on signals in their environment. This was also around the time of Color (the photo app which raised 40m or something off just a pitch deck) — “ambient computing” was becoming part of the zeitgeist.

Thanks for the kind words! <3

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#476

Post by russ »

thakoppno wrote: post #390
russ wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, I built this exact thing as a 120% project at Twitter in 2011. It was called “Flocks”. It even had transient/temporal flocks based on geo check-in and sound-fingerprint flocks for movies, tv shows, and events. We implemented the Shazam audio signature algo from a research paper we found. The thesis was: it’s more natural for people to have conversations when there’s a shared context. It became a widely known pro…

Twitter and a a time shifted and syncd media experience is still such a good idea.

I agree — I’d love that.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#477

Post by russ »

romwell wrote: post #364
russ wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a big graveyard of products/companies that have tried to kill Larry over the years. Meta has been trying since 2009. Back then, a former, well-known Facebook employee once told me not to join Twitter (thankfully, I didn’t listen). He said they, “have a wall at the office with a list of all the things Twitter does well. Every week someone checks another item off. We’re going to kill Twitter.” This moment is pr…

This would not be Meta killing Twitter, as much as Twitter doing a seppuku and Meta walking over Twitter's corprse.

Twitter has been and still is, its own worst enemy.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#478

Post by abledon »

imustbeevil wrote: post #96
quadcore wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk made a lot of mistakes with twitter Now call me crazy but I disagree. I think - or rather I feel - he's doing an excelent job somehow. He's doing what other executives are afraid to do: he's building and building requires some walls to be hammered down ; and yeah this makes some noise and smoke. He's moving fast and breaking things (if you'd excuse the easy punt). To me, what he's doing is exciting and I think t…

As someone who wants all of the other things he's supposed to be building, I can't imagine how you would not see Twitter as an objective step back. Every single change he has made to Twitter is exclusively to claw back income from users because he made all of the advertisers leave. Anyone competent would have just added the features they wanted without burning 80% of the company's income and staff.

Elon has said he's ok losing money on Twitter. Its about providing a free speech platform where people with opposing views are allowed to express them.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#479

Post by upon_drumhead »

thrashh wrote: post #443
irishloop wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any evidence Musk understands what made Twitter great, either. At this point, someone just needs to stand up a Twitter clone that can handle the traffic because I think most regular Twitter users are having a much worse experience on there now -- from my own anecdotal experience as a semi-heavy twitter user.

I’m not a fan of Musk but Musk isn’t trying to make Twitter better… He’s trying to make Twitter able to pay its own bills. Twitter has never made money (except once) in its 17 years of existence. Twitter as it was should not exist. It’s like a bakery that sells loaves for bread for 20c at a loss. It’s going to eventually implode unless something changes.

Twitter was profitable for two years, 2018 and 2019.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/274563/annual-net-income...

My understanding is the majority of those loss years was due to how they accounted for RSUs, however I can’t find that easily right now.

I don’t get the impression that it was at all close to imploding pre-musk. Do you have any links to back up that claim?

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#480

Post by [deleted] »

captaincrowbar wrote: post #389
Torkel wrote: post #352

I don't get this at all. To me it seems like it will obviously fail. 1. Twitter is all about who is there. How will they make people start posting on this? 2. New platforms take off because they innovate, not because they do what others do but slightly tweaked. 3. I have a really hard time seeing people mass escaping twitter to this du to morals. Facebook/Zuck is just as reviled as Twitter/Musk. If not more reviled.…

1. Facebook has more than 10 times as many users as Twitter. They don't need to add new users, they just need to make it easy for FB users to also use Threads. 2. But the whole point here is that others aren't doing this any more. Threads isn't supposed to be an innovation, just a Twitter replacement. Twitter is dying, Mastodon is too complicated for non-geeks, BlueSky could have been a contender but they didn't get…

[deleted]
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