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Threads, an Instagram app

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Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#671

Post by zarzavat »

ymolodtsov wrote: post #601
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 don't see any sign Meta understands what made Twitter great Well, Elon definitely doesn't. > 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 They're using the most popular social network which they happen to own, which already has pre-built social connections for most people who might want to try…

Threads may be very popular among the existing Instagram user base, but the question is whether Twitter users are going to switch.

Elon’s understanding of Twitter is poor, but Zuck’s may be worse. After all, there’s a reason that Twitter users have been on Twitter and not on Facebook all this time. Facebook is a byword for a locked down, unpleasant social network experience.

Twitter gets all the headlines because it’s becoming shittier, but Facebook has been consistently shit for a very long time and Zuck hasn’t seen fit to do anything about that.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#672

Post by devnullbrain »

snowwrestler wrote: post #282
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.

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.

When I read others on HN talk about the Facebook experience it often feels like they have a completely foreign viewpoint to you and me.

When I open Facebook, I don't see ranting family members. I see half a dozen groups and pages full of or operated by people I don't know.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#673

Post by solarkraft »

babl-yc wrote: post #446
solarkraft wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After trying Mastodon for a few months, it's certainly not it. Why?

From my experience: - Feed was purely chronological (no algorithmic feed) so I missed a lot of content - Sign-up process isn't obvious due to decentralization - Likes, profiles sometimes had bugs or required extra clicks if from other servers - Few people I follow migrated from Twitter, and most have since stopped posting due to lack of engagement

I agree about the algorithm. People wanting a strictly chronological timeline seem to largely be a very particular tech crowd.

I don't personally notice a lack of engagement. Maybe not everyone migrated, but I feel like the most important people have.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#674

Post by pjc50 »

russ wrote: post #319
interestica wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

This is the sort of comment that keeps me coming back to HN - incredible. You were absolutely right that livetweeting TV is one of the great uses of Twitter, and it's a real shame this never got a wider rollout.

During the pandemic we started a sort of "virtual mst3k": cue up a film, everyone presses play at a particular time, and tweet along with jokes and the occasional screenshot. We're now up to film #300 and still haven't run out of "bad" movies. An endless source of cinematic surprises.

("bad" is very loosely defined, but if it's a critical success or made a lot of money, that's probably not it. We've seen a lot of Roger Corman, Shawscope, Hammer, Amicus, Cannon Films, Dino de Laurentiis etc)

> ultimately, like most things at Twitter, never shipped.

This is why the "Twitter will die instantly when 80% of the engineers are sacked" takes were wrong, isn't it? 80% of the engineers were working on products that would never see the light of day, instead.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#676

Post by [deleted] »

coolandsmartrr wrote: post #285
spike021 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

[deleted]

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#677

Post by iopq »

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…

My open source tribe switched to Mastodon, but not the pro-Ukraine tribe which relies on reporters to Tweet stuff from Ukraine

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#678

Post by gureddio »

rcme wrote: post #624
lopis wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to be great. Users are already on instagram. Instagram reels were not better than snapchat stories, yet they still basically killed snapchat, because if people are already on Instagram, and so are their friends, that's all that matters.

Instagram Reels is Instagram's TikTok competitor. Instagram called their stories product "Stories." Also, in a lot of ways, Instagram stories were better than Snapchat stories. For one, you have a wider network on Instagram compared to Snapchat, so there is more content to consume. Instagram also added a bunch of nice features, like various stickers you can interact with. The stickers were also tappable like buttons,…

That and Snapchat's entire UX is utterly unintuitive

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#679

Post by iopq »

hobo_mark wrote: post #507
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…

> The absurd levels of pornography Incidentally, that is also the case on Bluesky and one reason I would not dare to invite anybody on there until they address it.

Do you have an invite for me? Tell me where you found all that porn so I can avoid it

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#680

Post by devnullbrain »

john_max_1 wrote: post #667
mmcnl wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram obliterated Snapchat with Stories.

Read my comment again, I am asking for a single standalone product that's fully incubated inside Facebook and that's successful.

You won't find one because you've given an arbitrary limitation that is contrary to how Meta do business. Threads is not even standalone because it uses the Instagram graph.
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