Live data from Hacker News

Threads users down by more than a half

bbc.com

71–80 of 566 posts

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#71
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the most recent estimates of Twitter's value, Musk has already train wrecked 10s of billions of dollars. You mention that Twitter isn't that fundamentally different and from a product perspective, and I would mostly agree, but their finances are WAY worse than they were pre-Musk. The company has lost something like 50% of ad revenue, they've saddled themselves with something like an extra $1B dollars a year…

> Musk has already train wrecked 10s of billions of dollars. Why would a user of the site/app care about this? How is it impacting their experience?

It doesn’t usually matter to the user “why” a product is no longer appealing.

Financial woes though will usually produce change that impacts the user, for better or worse (a good kick in the ass, or craven desperation may follow).

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#72

The reason Threads is failing is that, for whatever reason, they chose to launch without a desktop experience. I can't imagine how many users went to threads.net, clicked around for a few minutes while being extremely confused on how to sign up or access the product, then left permanently. No, I'm not going to download your mobile app, and most people won't either.

What % of users do you think care about a desktop experience? I expect the vast majority of users would be mobile-only. I'm sure you can find relevant statistics about Twitters desktop vs mobile usage.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#73
post #43

Facebook has done enough feature launches that they train their teams to look for and expect a huge initial engagement peak as people explore the product. It's Deltoid 101.

I don't work there anymore, but gods I miss Deltoid. It was a fantastic tool. Google's experimentation UX is like a decade behind.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#74
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the most recent estimates of Twitter's value, Musk has already train wrecked 10s of billions of dollars. You mention that Twitter isn't that fundamentally different and from a product perspective, and I would mostly agree, but their finances are WAY worse than they were pre-Musk. The company has lost something like 50% of ad revenue, they've saddled themselves with something like an extra $1B dollars a year…

> Musk has already train wrecked 10s of billions of dollars. Why would a user of the site/app care about this? How is it impacting their experience?

I never made the claim that a user should. The guy I was replying to said "Musk isn't going to train-wreck 10s of billions" and I was responding to that.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#75
post #23

I don’t use Twitter because I like Twitter, but because that’s where the people that I like to interact with (mostly writers) are. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Twitter isn’t going to be that place with each new chaos monkey attack from Musk, but what the successor place is going to be remains to be seen. Threads failed the smell test early on because it started out with algorithmic feed only and the algori…

why not just ignore the "chaos monkeys" and focus on your writers instead? no one is forcing you to interact with anyone you don't like on X.

One thing that’s impossible to ignore is that Twitter now forces you to read bad replies. Before, it would rank the most popular replies near the top, but now you have to scroll past lots of low-quality replies from people who are boosted just because they pay for the privilege.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#76
post #23

I don’t use Twitter because I like Twitter, but because that’s where the people that I like to interact with (mostly writers) are. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Twitter isn’t going to be that place with each new chaos monkey attack from Musk, but what the successor place is going to be remains to be seen. Threads failed the smell test early on because it started out with algorithmic feed only and the algori…

why not just ignore the "chaos monkeys" and focus on your writers instead? no one is forcing you to interact with anyone you don't like on X.

What’s X?

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#78
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon isn't going to be /the/ new place. Hopefully it will become part of many new places.

Last year Mastodon went through a hype cycle. Everyone was declaring Twitter over. You had people stating they were leaving for good, dual-posting, etc. Funnily enough many of those same people are back on Twitter today with little mention of Mastodon. It peaked in November and then went into decline. As people leave, the value of the network goes down so even more people leave. Musk's antics might prop it up every o…

It did peak in December last year, but then it "declined" and stabilized at more than double the active users it had before Elon bought Twitter: https://mastodon-analytics.com/

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#79
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon isn't going to be /the/ new place. Hopefully it will become part of many new places.

Last year Mastodon went through a hype cycle. Everyone was declaring Twitter over. You had people stating they were leaving for good, dual-posting, etc. Funnily enough many of those same people are back on Twitter today with little mention of Mastodon. It peaked in November and then went into decline. As people leave, the value of the network goes down so even more people leave. Musk's antics might prop it up every o…

It’s so funny to me watching everyone debate about what is or isn’t going to be the next ultimate single massive platform.

I, and many Fediverse people, are on the Fedi explicitly hoping it isn’t in that list. Mastodon is a success to me because of the thousands of people on it and that I interact with, and that it is precisely not containing the masses.

So many people think we need another Reddit and Twitter. Many of us however are looking for exactly something not Reddit or Twitter.

Mastodon and Lemmy/etc are a smash success to me. They have more traffic, users and activity than the other comparable options combined (citation needed). And most importantly, they did it without becoming the next big thing.

Plus if, god forbid, it does become the next big thing - It can still isolate and be a small forum. That alone is lovely to me.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Twitter isn’t going to be that place with each new chaos monkey attack from Musk Is this hyperbole? Twitter will be fine, Musk isn't going to train-wreck 10s of billions. Twitter today isn't even that fundamentally different from pre-Musk. The biggest change has been perception from ideological extremes. I'm sure Twitter will evolve but evolution is for growth, not death. You…

It couldn’t be more fundamentally different for people who just want to read content without an account. Previously, Twitter was a thing that existed, now it’s not a thing that exists.

99.9% of people will just click the google login button and continue on as if nothing had happened. i sympathize with you. i had to make a throwaway google account. but it's not even close to relevant to the vast majority of users. not saying that's a good thing but it's reality.
Post reply on HN