11 ms·
Threads has 10M sign ups in seven hours
- activiation 3y agoNo web app means I won't even look at it.
- stefan_ 3y agoIt's funny, you got 6 months to make the shittiest possible Twitter clone because at this point anything will go, but then you end up captured by Instagram product management that want you to irrevocably hook it up to their systems (why?) and weirdos that still think "app-first". Jesus, can nobody execute anymore? Also no EU apparently because making a product that doesn't record every interaction and pushes it down some "personalized ads" pipeline is unimaginable.
- planb 3y agoYou make it sound like they (meta) are dumb for making these decisions. Probably, their goals shifted from "get as many users as possible" to "earn as much money as possible". I guess they know very well what they are doing.
- waihtis 3y agoyou are so far in the niche in today's internet userbase it will not matter
- activiation 3y agoIt doesnt to Facebook but it doesnt matter to me either... You would have to pay me to install a Facebook app.
- drcongo 3y agoThey did actually try that once. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/30/facebook-paid-13-year-olds-for-access-to-all-their-internet-data https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/30/facebook-...
- triyambakam 3y agoUser base if the West, but not predominantly the world
- peoplefromibiza 3y agoNot even that. Threads is not available in EU, which is the biggest chunk in terms of population of the so called West.
- waihtis 3y agoIf I had to make a guess I would have supposed non-West to be overwhelmingly mobile first also. Is this not true?
- triyambakam 3y agoYes that's what I was intending to say. So I agree with you, that the idea that a user who prefers mobile first being niche is highly specific to the West.
- fennecfoxy 3y agoLmao, the world outside the West is MORE mobile based than the West. Many citizens of many countries can't afford a laptop or desktop setup, go to a small village in Thailand or something and they'll all have cheap Chinese Android phones as their connection to the local outside worlds.
- Semaphor 3y ago> No web app means I won't even look at it. It means I can’t even look at it as the app is not available in my region (Europe) :D But I guess I’ll be okay, if today is any indication, I’ll get the play-by-play on both Hacker News, and Lemmy …
- berkle4455 3y agoTwitter is going to end up with app-only soon. You can authenticate users with device attestation on an app and you can't on a website. That's how Twitter is going to avoid bots and scrapers.
- baanlox 3y agoEven if there was a web app, why would anyone get excited for a Twitter clone? This is just such a mind blowing lack of creativity. If I didn't know better I would think this is a type of parody or satire.
- sam_goody 3y agoFor the uninitiated (I guess I live under a rock), what is threads? When I open the link I just get a funny logo and the "from meta" label
- monospaced 3y agoIt is Meta‘s new competitor for Twitter
- zahrc 3y agoTwitter alternative by Meta
- easyThrowaway 3y agoA twitter clone with a different, less impulsive weirdo CEO at the helm.
- medo-bear 3y agoLol. I cant wait to share my data with a guy who said his platform's users are "dumb f*cks" for sharing their data with him. Yummy
- folli 3y agodoes the "less" refer to "impulsive" only, or both "impulsive weirdo"?
- ubercore 3y agoMy vote is that Zuck is just as weird, but less impulsive.
- easyThrowaway 3y agoI was talking specifically about the "impulsive" part. Sorry, english is not my first language and adjectives order[1] truly messes up with my brain. [1]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/sentence-order-adjectives-rule-elements-of-eloquence-dictionary https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/senten...
- intsunny 3y agoGiven that Threads requires an app, and the app requires obscene permissions (health, etc) ... its hard not to think that Meta can't escape their set ways and this app is doomed to fail. The app serves Meta more than it does the public.
- bkishan 3y agoBy your logic, is Instagram a failure too? Its just those same permissions.
- benoliver999 3y agoInstagram doesn't require an app. But I get your point, I doubt people really care.
- greensmith 3y agoI doubt they will keep it app only. If they want to attract news outlets from twitter they will need to support embedding somehow
- saurik 3y agohttps://www.threads.net/t/CuVd5ibvscQ/ https://www.threads.net/t/CuVd5ibvscQ/
- miyuru 3y agothreads already have embedding, on web click on share button and there is a "get embed code" button.
- greensmith 3y agoAh OK, I hadn't (still haven't) downloaded the app so presumed it wasn't at all accessible without the app.
- manuelflara 3y ago
- jackdh 3y agoSeems like it might be starting to fall over, trying to load https://www.threads.net/@zuck https://www.threads.net/@zuck times out.
- unsupp0rted 3y agoSurely this is due to Zuckerberg’s poor leadership and inevitable upcoming demise. I say this sarcastically because that was the narrative whenever Twitter has had load issues.
- littlestymaar 3y agoAs if performance issues at launch time were comparable to a 17-year old service that started having issues after his new CEO decided to fire 80% of the staff…
- cedilla 3y agoThat's a valid comparison iff you ignore everything else Musk did during and after the Twitter takeover. Not saying people saying that where correct but it wasn't just people randomly blaming the CEO for no reason.
- jug 3y agoThe instances aren't comparable. It's normal to happen during extreme growth of several millions per hour. Less normal to suddenly happen to a functioning website post-organic growth for a decade.
- rkangel 3y agoIt's a reasonable response to Twitter's issues because of Musk publicising that he was going to clear out Twitter's bloated architecture. If you take responsibility for an architecture it's ok to be criticised if things go wrong.
- chronicsonic 3y agoI’m confused, one of the top comments says its app only, but here it shows its not.
- enqk 3y agoHow many bots?
- ablation 3y agoOnly being able to see the global firehose is deeply unpleasant. Despite selecting to follow my Instagram followers at sign-up, I am instead greeted with that plus... everyone? Or just Meta's hand-picked verified early-adopters? It's so noisy as to be useless right now.
- spaceman_2020 3y agoHalf my feed is filled with people sharing their Threads profiles. While I don’t think Meta has the culture to foster the kind of chaotic insanity that goes on at Twitter, Musk better up his game - this is a far more serious mainstream contender than the Fediverse.
- jillesvangurp 3y agoThe fediverse's slow and steady approach might be long term more sustainable than VCs burning billions in repeated attempts to "conquer" the users. This one has the distinct smell of desperation around it. I don't think even Meta itself is that convinced it will work. Whatever happens, the fediverse will be fine. It's not dependent on VCs, ads, influencers, scammers, etc. All it needs is people willing to set up servers and host some users. It's open source so as long as there are people willing to work on that, it continues to exist.
- rvz 3y ago> All it needs is people willing to set up servers and host some users. It's open source so as long as there are people willing to work on that, it continues to exist. The Fediverse requires money and donations to continue their uptime and it will get difficult for them to stay relevant if they cannot handle the influx of users posting on Threads when they federate. Meta is already making money and is insanely profitable and doesn't need VCs. Essentially they have won social networks and have already signed NDAs with Mastodon admins of the largest instances to federate with them anyway. This integration only benefits Meta and Threads and at this rate Threads will be larger than the entire Fediverse and will be the Fediverse.
- fennecfoxy 3y agoNo normal person cares about the "fediverse", in the same way that no normal person cares about the bored out engine of some classic car that some petrol head tuned & turbocharged; they just want four wheels. Regular people don't care about the minutiae of a platform, they just want to use the platform & get on with their lives. Of course this is isn't great, but it's just how people are.
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- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ggm 3y agoI am unlikely to join. So, I ask from a distance: Have meta defined any public interest oversight What are they doing about hate speech, CSA and crime Do they have a penalty box or exclusions policy for politicians and political hacks and what appellate process exists Do they recognise the force of national laws in any specific jurisdictions beyond the USA How does meta intend dealing with Iran and china
- pjc50 3y ago> Do they recognise the force of national laws in any specific jurisdictions beyond the USA Yes: they recognize the GDPR and are therefore not launching at all in the EU.
- MikusR 3y agoThey are not launching in EU due to DMA. Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp are all in EU.
- bhouston 3y agoI suspect they will reuse moderation fromFB and Insta on Threads so more of what they have been doing. They are a known quantity at this point.
- ggm 3y agoIt's pretty much impossible for them to be WORSE than Musk, although I am sure this is a perverse challenge in some sense.
- nixass 3y ago> How does meta intend dealing with Iran and china Through appease, of course
- say_it_as_it_is 3y agoI won't use Threads because every Meta mobile application is a very intrusive surveillance system.
- aeonflux 3y agoIs this only available in US (on iOS)?
- freediver 3y agoTelling when the main metric used to describe a product is number of signed up users.
- thom 3y agoI’m one of these signups, but the purely algorithmic timeline is a dealbreaker for me. Obviously you need to optimise for the day one experience for as many people as possible so maybe a bunch of influencers and brands is what they want to see, but I’ve no interest in this iteration.
- boomboomsubban 3y agoAre usernames somehow transferred from Instagram/Facebook? Or how many of those 10M are domain squatters, hoping someday Coke will pay them the for the threads name "Surge?"
- tabjsina 3y agoYou reuse your Instagram username, so don’t think that would apply here
- ranting-moth 3y agoTo put the numbers into perspective, 0.2% of Meta's users signed up for Threads. Meta has 3.59 billion active users: https://www.investing.com/academy/statistics/facebook-meta-facts/ https://www.investing.com/academy/statistics/facebook-meta-f...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- brnt 3y agouser =/= user account. One user can have multiple accounts.
- ranting-moth 3y agoTrue, theoretically it might have been one user creating 10M accounts.
- brnt 3y agoThis isn't theory. Bots aren't people.
- jmiskovic 3y agoDon't they aggressively fight this? I think all your accounts can get banned if you use multiple accounts. I know they demand a working phone number and other identification data. Not saying there are no multiple accounts, just that it is not a wide-spread thing like on reddit/twitter/mastodon.
- brnt 3y agoBots? Troll factories? It's not expensive to pay people in poor countries to go through these hoops. I mean, there's businesses you can contract right now by the million if you wish.
- patrickmcnamara 3y agoFacebook itself is very aggressive about the one account thing. But Instagram is not. It's common enough within my friend group to have multiple accounts, and bots are also kinda common.
- dismalpedigree 3y agoNo doubt 10m “journalists” who will just create some fluff content to post on other social media platforms.
- keyle 3y agois that not really "instagram users"? I already dislike the platform. I cannot browser threads.net nor sign up on the web. ROBOT All your data are belong to us.
- asim 3y agoInstall app, requires Instagram login, uninstall app.
- RayVR 3y agoAnyone else hear the sound of 10M bots and influencers arriving.
- tgv 3y agoAnd journalists. Who can resist a fresh new source of click-bait?
- JSavageOne 3y agoI'm not going to download this because there's no web application. It's clear that they intentionally did not release a web application in order to maximize app installs and thus maximum control over their users (eg. scrape your contacts, push notifications, and most importantly to show you ads). In 2023 nobody wants to install yet another app, so this is a clever strategy to optimize for app installs. Not going to work on me though. If it's just a Twitter clone only accessible to mobile users, then content quality is going to be low because nobody is typing thought provoking, in-depth analysis from their mobile phones.
- dan1234 3y agoDeny access to contacts and push notifications, use DNS based ad blocker should take care of those problems. Are people actually typing thought provoking, in-depth analysis into Twitter?
- JSavageOne 3y agoThere actually is high quality content in Twitter threads. Of course most content on Twitter isn't high quality though.
- extr 3y agoTwitter is full of interesting niche people talking about their favorite subjects. For example, there is no better way to follow the war in Ukraine.
- yorwba 3y agoBased on reading the Institute for the Study of War's daily updates, I got the impression that they rely a lot more on Telegram. E.g. the most recent post https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-5-2023 https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offens... has 90 t.me links and 22 twitter.com links. Since for the ISW folks, following the war in Ukraine is kind of their job, I think that's a pretty good approximation of the two platforms' relative importance in that area.
- nixass 3y agoHas anyone tried using it in browser? Does it work well or they force app download onto you like they do with Instagram? I think Meta felt the pressure, seeing people might move to Mastodon (happy user from today) and wanted their piece of cake
- chinathrow 3y agoThere is (currently) no forced app download for Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/accounts/emailsignup/ https://www.instagram.com/accounts/emailsignup/
- wraptile 3y agoBrowser only allows to view posts and preview user profiles (shows first 10 posts and replies and basic user info). It's bad.
- rsolva 3y agoThat is already twice as much as the Fediverse has currently. It will be interesting to observe what happens when Threads flip the switch and becomes compatible with the ActivityPub protocol. As a long time inhabitant of the Fediverse, I do not like the idea of Meta slurping up my public posts hosted on my own server. Would it help to put my profile and public posts under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial license? I guess that would hinder Meta, in theory at least, to use my content as they are the very definition of a commercial actor, earning big piles of cash mixing user content with ads. EDIT: I guess I'll use this license for all my posts from now on: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
- ahahahahah 3y ago> As a long time inhabitant of the Fediverse, I do not like the idea of Meta slurping up my public posts hosted on my own server. The whole point of the Fediverse is that any random person or company can come along and start slurping up your public posts (which, of course, is just another reason that it's a terrible idea).
- mullingitover 3y agoThe "No wifi. Less space than a nomad. Lame." assessments are coming on strong. It's doing incredibly well for v0.0.1-alpha. Not a single hiccup that would indicate scaling problems. Bluesky had this for the taking, and they failed to execute. It's a shame that it'll be Meta owning it, but let's face it: they were able to ship a product with good market fit, and people are happy with it. They'll study Twitter's meltdown in college marketing courses decades from now.
- extr 3y agoI say this as someone who loves twitter: it's cooked. I spent time on threads earlier today and it is the answer people have been looking for. Nobody has a better track record of giving the users the features they want, even if that means cloning them wholesale from competitors. And more importantly, nobody does hyperscale content moderation better than Meta. If you're a public figure and can get the same/larger engagement as you would on twitter, why continue to bother with it? Twitter is more hostile than it's ever been. Right now my For You tab is filled with content I wouldn't have dreamed of a year or two ago, fight videos, videos of people dying, race war, gender war, you name it. Elon is egging it on, it's a complete mess. My prediction is twitter will remain the refuge of the long tail. Niche people and communities will stick around, as will I. But that doesn't support billions in ad revenue. Threads will become the "place things happen". The first time a blog post is written about the Epic Dunk that AOC had on Ted Cruz and the screenshots are of Threads, you'll know I was right.
- pjc50 3y agoThreads is banned in the EU due to GDPR issues. We'll have to see who backs down on that first. Are we going to go back to country specific social networks like Orkut? VK? (which is still going)
- pavlov 3y agoI don't think "banned" is the right word because Meta chose not to release the app until they've cleared the account sharing. They're just being cautious. It doesn't seem to me that logging in to your account from multiple apps should be a GDPR issue. Lots of companies have that kind of setup where they offer separate mobile apps for different user roles.
- b0tch7 3y agoI think you're spot on here. Some very obvious features are missing, but for a v1 launch the app runs smooth, feels clean, is easy to get started, and has a jovial early internet feel. Meta will ship most every feature the average Twitter user would want in the next month or so and then it's game over. Aside, it's amazing how Elon's antics over the last year (or many years) have somehow made Zuck seem both personable and competent
- wraptile 3y agoI didn't have any expectations and still left unimpressed. All of the dark patterns are already there. No timeline control, no web UI, everything is aimed at data harvesting and it brings absolutely zero new innovation. It's kinda sad that we can't make a better Twitter. Is that really it?
- jug 3y agoBluesky has custom timeline control and web UI, and Mastodon is another potential option. For people saying it's not taking off, my Swedish community over at Mastodon is currently about as active as on Twitter. I think we're passing critical mass especially with the most recent exodus that filled the ranks even more. And yes it looks like not all but many are staying.
- MikusR 3y agoYou can't even create an account on Bluesky.
- fernandotakai 3y agoand bluesky is a really rough beta.
- whitepaint 3y agoWhen Android?
- DrScientist 3y agoUnless I've missed it - there is no website. So you have to access via a device which will leak enough information that you will be easily identifiable by the platform and those that the platform gives or is forced to give access to. Surely that makes the platform dead for the world to safely discuss anything vaguely controversial ( ie anything that matters )?
- WJW 3y agoThere is a website for viewing tweets/messages/whatever they are called, see for example https://www.threads.net/t/CuVd5ibvscQ/ https://www.threads.net/t/CuVd5ibvscQ/ https://www.threads.net/ https://www.threads.net/ does not (yet) show anything useful though.
- DrScientist 3y agoThanks - so I did miss it :-) Right now the www.threads.net landing page is awful and slow and entirely targeted at getting people to load the app, but your direct link shows a bit more promise and obviously doing a decent web site is something Meta could do if they so wished.
- nostrfanboi 3y agoNot got there in one day but there are now 20M+ priv/pub keys on the Nostr protocol, which is much more exciting tech than anything Meta would be able to come up with. https://stats.nostr.band/#total_users https://stats.nostr.band/#total_users
- dustypotato 3y agoWhy's every second user there bitcoin related?
- piokoch 3y agoThreads must be doing something really square with user data if they could not start in Europe because of violation of rather toothless GDPR regulation (as if someone really dig into all those possible settings instead of clicking ok on the popup).
- srrr 3y agoThe concern is about the Digital Markets Act and not the GDPR. To quote https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-05/meta-won-t-offer-threads-app-in-the-eu-on-regulatory-concerns https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-05/meta-won-... : A number of companies, including Meta, have self-designated themselves as “gatekeepers” under the DMA rules, which will potentially make them subject to stricter regulations around data sharing and giving preference to their own products. Gatekeepers are banned from combining users’ personal data across different platforms under the DMA. Threads is designed to let users follow the same accounts they’ve connected with on Instagram and keep their Instagram usernames, helping the social media giant leverage its billions of users to quickly gain scale.
- al_be_back 3y agorequires an Instagram account, but what if you don't have one, would Instagram require a Facebook account? that would be funny! Explains the 10M signups though, Meta has a huge network but I would've span it off, no Insta et al. OK - I'm off to create an Instagram account so I can create a Threads account so that I finally won't have to start using Twitter!
- coolandsmartrr 3y agoIt's pretty refreshing to see your Instagram follower/followees in a new light. Photo-centric Instagram felt a little stale with the same-old selfies and food selfies. Meanwhile, Thread texts seem to display more of their personality. The problem is, will people keep posting text?
- fennecfoxy 3y agoI notice their homepage/"marketing" is very tik-tok-esque. Before TT got massive I remember seeing stickers with just the logo slapped all over the place in Hammersmith, London where I worked at the time. Very guerilla, creating something that seems semi-exclusive. I won't be surprised if they (or already have) also follow in TT's footsteps of paying some big names to sign on and do some content for the platform, which caused a surge for TT. Then again, TT was funded by a government...though sometimes FB/meta appears to have all the power of a small government.
- ZacnyLos 3y agoWaiting till they implement Fediverse. Then not protocol wars but server wars will start ;)
- majikaja 3y agoOn Japanese Twitter I have seen women complaining because recently they can't converse with men via DMs to sell sex unless they follow each other. If the site no longer functions as a prostitution platform I wonder if it can survive here.
- helij 3y agothreads.net returns a blank page for me on Firefox on Linux. Works fine on Chromium and Brave. Oh well, I guess no threads for me.
- izzydata 3y agoSo it is like Mastodon, but they steal all your data so they can sell it and comes with ads? Are people in some kind of Stockholm syndrome with getting their data harvested by mega corporations?
- h0h0h0h0111 3y agothe page hangs for me with a bunch of CORS errors in the console - am I the only one?
- sys_64738 3y agoWhere is the login or signup button on their threads.net webpage?
- hnburnsy 3y agoSo now if you say something on Threads that gets your account suspended what happens to your IG/FB account?