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

591–600 of 1001 posts

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#591

Post by Cwizard »

I think it is surprising they went with the Instagram branding. Instagram has a better brand reputation than Facebook but I would also say that the brand image is still more for young and fun content, less serious things. Which I would think appeals more to younger people 20-35yo.

While what makes twitter great is that it is a more serious platform where you can get the ‘insight’ of professionals (journalists, politicians, etc).

That being said, Twitter’s brand is in the toilet right now. Maybe that is enough for this to attract people.

I do wonder what the alternative would be? Whatsapp branding? Feels off too… Would it have been better to use a new brand?

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#592

Post by esskay »

This _could_ be a twitter competitor. But the instance of bundling it with Instagram is what will ensure it fails. Meta have absolutely no common sense when it comes to understanding their audience.

If you're going to take on Twitter why on earth would you make Instagram a part of that when the two share nothing in common.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#593

Post by irthomasthomas »

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…

The AI mania has been great for Meta. The android, Zuckerberg is ideally suited to take advantage of it. All year, Meta has been publishing a steady stream of fun, almost-open-source AI models. They have, no doubt, gained a huge amount of kudos, in a short time, from all the AI bros who have taken over twitter. Credit where it's due, the 2023 firmware and model updates to Zuckerberg have been quite impressive.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#594

Post by dbish »

foooorsyth wrote: post #566

Anyone interested in talking about the product decisions instead of Musk/Zuck hate? - Interesting that they went with a stand-alone app instead of baking this into IG like they did with Stories (which killed Snap overnight). I wonder how much they’ll advertise the download inside of IG. - Can’t say I like the name. Doesn’t evoke much emotion in me. The term “thread” is rarely used by normies without the word “Twitter…

I think it's "@" not "a", like @, which makes sense to me.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#595

Post by esskay »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #87

Oh, wait, this feels like the start of a cyberpunk story. If TikTok gets banned, where to the users go? Instagram. Threads could replace Twitter. Reddit is going downhill... Maybe Meta could even buy it in a firesale? Outside of chat apps like Discord, Slack, Teams and Telegram (which compete with WhatsApp), Meta will have consolidated most of the world's social media under them. And that's assuming they dont buy out…

> Reddit is going downhill... Maybe Meta could even buy it in a firesale?

The problem is Reddit has very little real value, and to get that value you'd have to go even further into pushing its users away from the platform as you'd need to be able to target and identify individuals.

Unlike Twitter, Instagram, Facebook etc the majority of Reddit is very intentionally anonymous, not even requiring an email address. A sizable portion still use 'old reddit' because of how awful and hostile the redesign was.

To get it to a point of profitability it would need to be more viable for advertisers, and that only comes with forcing them down users throats, which traditionally is not a reddit thing and would alienate people even more than they've already done recently.

It's also worth noting its 18 years old and still hasn't come remotely close to being profitable.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#596

Post by timeon »

KSPAtlas wrote: post #66

On the fediverse, there's already a huge number of instances planning to block this app when possible as it isn't really in the spirit of the fediverse - it's proprietary, owned by a large company and centralized

I thing privacy is bigger concern.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#597

Post by mrweasel »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #269
afavour wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I think the Instagram branding is deliberate.

I think so to, which says a lot about Meta. They understand full well that the Facebook brand is tarnished, irrelevant, or at the very least "old hat". You couldn't launch a new product under the Facebook brand if you wanted to.

The brand under which they launch isn't relevant though, they aren't going to compete with Twitter. The users they'd need to lure over are well aware that Instagram is Meta/Facebook/Zuckerberg and will not even try the platform on that basis alone. It's the same reason that their Metaverse doesn't stand a chance, none of the users who would normally be early adopters wants anything to do with them.

Unless they somehow roles Threads into Instagram I don't see this being a massively successful platform.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#598

Post by jack_riminton »

phs318u wrote: post #511
gochi wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

I'd add that there are more user cohorts than you describe. There are the scrollers that just want a constantly changing feed to "engage" with (typically though not always, showing little discretion about whom they follow), there are the "industrial producers" (whether corporates or individuals) who want the world to benefit from their wisdom (showing little to no discretion about who follows them - the more the merr…

Good points. The question therefore becomes what persuades advertisers to spend money on there and so what will drive a critical mass of users and content to get to that point. No doubt the "industrial producers" and the peddlers of dopamine and outrage will be what gets the platform there.

plus ça change

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#599

Post by prox »

irthomasthomas wrote: post #593
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…

The AI mania has been great for Meta. The android, Zuckerberg is ideally suited to take advantage of it. All year, Meta has been publishing a steady stream of fun, almost-open-source AI models. They have, no doubt, gained a huge amount of kudos, in a short time, from all the AI bros who have taken over twitter. Credit where it's due, the 2023 firmware and model updates to Zuckerberg have been quite impressive.

Just going to post this here, was reading an article about Threads, but it mentioned Twitter as well :

>Twitter no longer has a press department. Questions sent to the former email address received a poop emoji as the auto-response.

What the heck?

Post reply on HN