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Threads, an Instagram app

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Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#681

Post by shreyshnaccount »

zenmaster10665 wrote: post #618
shreyshnaccount wrote: post #614

- Monopolistic apps are problematic and unreliable for users - Need for an open standard for communication on these apps, similar to UPI in India for transactions - These apps are used like utilities but governed as services. It is effectively impossible to exist without big tech products right now, as an individual and as a business. We need to fight for digital rights. - Communication should be as essential a utili…

The issue with this theory is that there is no obvious way to have both deep interoperability between apps as well as innovation. Interoperability is a contract,and that contract will slow down product evolution and lead to worse consumer products.

That's certainly not true. Interoperability for basic features such as text, photos, videos, posts and comments doesn't mean apps are not free to add more features. Also, having an extendable framework will easily account for this

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#682

Post by sgt »

pcchristie wrote: post #305
thrdbndndn wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram's web version has a serious bug that when you scroll down fast enough, it constantly loads the same content again and again. This bug has been there for months and basically renders it unusable.

I wondered if this was just me because I use Opera. It's awful.

Same in latest Chrome.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#683

Post by sgt »

keyle wrote: post #189

Wait, where is the web version? A big part of twitter is the web client... and embedded tweets all over the internet. Did they start this product by cloning instagram and removing the image centric approach? Why is this not a website first? My gut feel is that this competes as much with instagram as it does with Twitter.

I think for Instagram, Twitter and presumably Threads, very few people will use or bother with the web app. It's just not apps for the desktop.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#684

Post by corobo »

hhh wrote: post #635
luckystarr wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People on the Fediverse expected it very much. Meta already was trying to talk to the larger instances "off the record"[1]. Fediverse users are already planning to boycott any instance which federates with Meta to block any Embrace, Extend and Extinguish moves. [1] https://fosstodon.org/@kev/110592625692688836 edit: More info here: https://wedistribute.org/2023/06/fedipact-blocking-meta/

This behavior is pathetic. As long as Meta is open to federation to other instances, this can only be a good thing for the entire ecosystem.

Yeah, I do get the EEE angle people are worried about but that should really be halted from the Extend phase onwards if and when it comes up, otherwise people are just going to use the popular one - which will be Threads. It will start with an established userbase. It will start with the marketing Meta can throw at it.

Nobody outside of the HN crowd gives half a fluff about distributed social. They'll use the one that lets them interact with people they know. If that means they can talk cross-instance, sweet, they will. If they can't, Mastodon and ActivityPub in general continues to be a pain that the majority wont bother with.

If that's Mastodon's goal, fair enough. I think it's a bad goal.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#685

Post by pjc50 »

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've not seen anyone mention this yet, but: UK twitter is laughing at "Threads" because it's also the title of a notorious made-for-TV horror film about nuclear war https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/

> There's massive pent-up demand for an alternative

I'm not quite convinced by this; I think there's demand for things to go back how they were, but that's unsmashing the glass and is fundamentally impossible. Everyone seems to be resentfully clinging to the sinking platform until they hit a "f you I quit" moment, such as being rate-limited or their favourite account being deleted without warning.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#686

Post by pjc50 »

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…

A lot of LGBT twitter tribe are not going to move to a site where they have to post under their government name, for their own safety.

(A very important axis for social networks is the "IRL or not" one; Facebook and Linkedin are "IRL", Twitter and Mastodon are very definitely not. Which way is Threads going to go?)

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#687

Post by n3m4c »

esskay wrote: post #595
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 si…

Reddit has a lot of value, just not people who can utilize it. Anonymous nature of Reddit doesn't matter when you have Meta's cookies while accessing it. Content is also nicely categorized so they can easily push, for example, insurance and credit card ads on r/PersonalFinance. It is pretty wild that Mark Zuckerberg is the only person to figure out how to make money off of social media after more than 20 years of social media existing.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#688

Post by quickthrower2 »

netheril96 wrote: post #620
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 don't like the name "Threads" either. Probably because I'm a programmer.

Should have called it coroutines

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#689

Post by bigyikes »

geokon wrote: post #666
bertil wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a text-based app, which dramatically changes expectations. Instagram Stories was, like Instagram, photos and videos. That allows consistency in how things work (not that it does in practice because some gestures were based on shared expectations with Facebook Stories, others with TikTok or Snapchat, but… you get it). Facebook designers have suffered quite a bit from dealing with very inconsistent media format: c…

Do you have any thoughts on why they attached to the IG graph and not the FB graph? Maybe I'm in a bubble, IG seems very low text, low drama, low politics. Not very Twitter-y

I think the IG graph is more similar to the Twitter graph than the FB graph. Also, IG has much more of a “cool factor” which they’re hoping Threads will inherit.

I follow my grandparents on FB, and I don’t necessarily want that on my Threads.

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