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Threads, an Instagram app

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Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#761

Post by rsynnott »

version_five wrote: post #733
rsynnott wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see any sign Meta understands what made Twitter great I mean, it's extremely clear that current Twitter leadership doesn't understand that either. They're not competing with Twitter at its prime (or at least its peak influence; personally I preferred it when it was a lot smaller in the early 10s) from a few years ago; they're competing with a website that just went completely dark to the public internet and…

Twitter is monetized outrage. A lot had to fall into place for that to work. Of course they need a working website, but beyond that I believe they are way sticker than pundits claim. That unique combination of echo chamber plus the ability to reach across and mock, abuse, or become enraged by the other side, all while having a community, is not easily replicable.

> Twitter is monetized outrage.

I wonder, do you actually use it, or more to the point, did you pre-Musk? That's certainly a belief people have about the site, and it is certainly a facet of Twitter, but Twitter is (or was) only monetized outrage in the same way that Twitter is cat pictures or Twitter is porn or Twitter is celebrities. It was there, but unless you chose to engage with it you likely wouldn't see much of it (as the recommendation stuff started to break down under Musk, many people were surprised to see porn in the algorithmic feed; despite porn on Twitter being a huge deal, many users were surprised it was allowed because The Algorithm(TM) used to be good at hiding it from those who didn't engage with it).

I do think post-Musk that this effective auto-segmentation has become less of a thing, particularly for outrage/political stuff; the algorithmic stuff seems increasingly broken, and the auto-promotion of blueticks shoves all sorts of nonsense in your face. But for most of Twitter's lifespan, unless you were in that world, you didn't really see much of it.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#763

Post by py_rrho »

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…

[flagged]

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#764

Post by ericmay »

irishloop wrote: post #273
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 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.

It won’t work just like that because those who you want to follow on Twitter have a big following and are invested in the current platform. You’ve got to get big accounts to switch. This Instagram approach may work.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#765

Post by runeks »

modernerd wrote: post #481

“Soon, you’ll be able to follow and interact with people on other fediverse platforms, like Mastodon. They can also find you with your full username @username@threads.net.” [1] Did not expect Fediverse integration from Meta. [1] https://9to5google.com/2023/07/03/threads-instagram-app-coun...

So they allow Threads-to-Mastodon, but they key question is whether they allow Mastodon-to-Threads. The former is just a way to recruit users to their platform, while the latter gives access to their platform without being a user.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#766

Post by api »

runeks wrote: post #765
modernerd wrote: post #481

“Soon, you’ll be able to follow and interact with people on other fediverse platforms, like Mastodon. They can also find you with your full username @username@threads.net.” [1] Did not expect Fediverse integration from Meta. [1] https://9to5google.com/2023/07/03/threads-instagram-app-coun...

So they allow Threads-to-Mastodon, but they key question is whether they allow Mastodon-to-Threads. The former is just a way to recruit users to their platform, while the latter gives access to their platform without being a user.

A large number of fediverse instances are defederating preemptively to prevent the obvious spam and embrace-extend-extinguish.

The fediverse will never be as big as corporate social media, but that’s a feature. Meta can keep the dopamine scrollers and influencers and ads.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#767

Post by runeks »

rcme wrote: post #716
coolandsmartrr wrote: post #130

Reminds me of how Instagram absorbed Snapchat usecases with stories. Instagram tackled the competition for ephemeral stories simply by implementing Stories as a feature. This time, Threads is a fully fledged app. Getting users to adopt a new app might take as much time as getting Messenger installed. Still, Instagram has a robust social graph to lead users towards downloading it. In fact, they seem to have already on…

It's funny that there is a narrative that Instagram killed Snapchat with their stories feature. Snapchat still has something like 383M DAU. That's a massive user base. Instagram Stories definitely blunted Snap's growth, especially with millennials and older.

Snapchat is losing $300M USD every quarter. Unless they find a solution they’ll be gone soon.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#768

Post by zpeti »

vidarh wrote: post #746
zpeti wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's why this is an uphill battle, which no-one seems to understand. Everyone who actively participates in twitter, and even has a modest following, is tied to twitter. You cannot move a 100k followers from twitter to thread. All the influential people HAVE to keep using twitter to serve their followers. Even if they build a following on thread, it will take years to build what they have on twitter.

The problem with this is that that following is only worth something if they actually see your posts, and stats on twitter makes it clear how small a proportion of your following will see any given of your tweets. Other interaction drives that home as well. Typically people seem to largely get far more engagement with a far smaller number of followers on Mastodon, and the same will be true on other new platforms for…

> Typically people seem to largely get far more engagement with a far smaller number of followers on Mastodon

Are we talking about mastodon or threads? Do you think Threads won't have an algorithmic feed?

It obviously will, so this point is only relevant to mastodon, which is still 100x smaller than twitter.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#769

Post by joepie91_ »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #743
hhh wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a very real concern that there will be a flood of hate speech, scams, and ads. Meta has shown themselves to be absolutely terrible at moderation in recent years. Believe it or not, most Mastodon / Fediverse admins & users aren't interested in taking over the world and having a huge reach. They just want a nice community.

It continues to boggle my mind how so many tech folks just don't seem to understand that "maximum scale" is not everybody's idea of success, and that not everything is built to "take over the world".

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#770

Post by worksonmine »

gmerc wrote: post #641
3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stickiness of Twitter isn't just about reliability and handling scale, but also (and in fact mostly) the network effects. You can't transfer over your content, likes, replies, followers. So even in the best case scenario where Threads picks up and outshines Twitter in the long term, do expect that to be a long term. At least few years. That is, unless Elon continues on his steady path of catastrophic degradation…

Networks move when there is a general consensus that their future is at risk though.

Do you have an example of that happening before? Every exodus I've seen is just the most vocal bubbles jumping ship for political reasons, but once the dust settles ends up being just a rounding error.

Companies can and do die, but rarely (if ever) because a niche on one end of the political spectrum has a tantrum. Have you considered that what you call consensus might just be within your bubble? I don't know anyone who cares.

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