21 ms·

Threads users down by more than a half

• mikece 3y ago
  Only by half? I thought traffic on Threads was off by 90% a week after the launch when "one hundred million people joined"... then again they probably joined just to see what it was, were unimpressed, and went back to Mastodon or Twitter.
• rvz 3y ago
  So 100M+ Threads accounts created with 50M+ active users still sticking around on Threads after the media hype and fanfare? Compare that to the rest of the other so-called 'alternatives' other than Twitter / X that is a much better result especially in less than a month and the closest to a proper alternative to Twitter / X. This is even without launching in the EU, so as soon as Threads is available in the EU, they can get another 100M+ easily anyway. This is what I call 'early days'. We'll see what happens in 6 months or a year whether if people want to continue using Threads rather than initial sign ups. Retention is what matters.
• seydor 3y ago
  An easy fix , just let the users fight
• ryzvonusef 3y ago
  I have a particular problem with Threads/Instagram and Tiktok, that I feel I don't have with either Youtube or Twitter; region base recommendations after signing in. I can understand that if you are not signed in, the recommendations are based on which country you are in, so that's understandable. But once I log in, if you continue to recommend content based on the region as my default option, and NOT based on my following/watching habits, it becomes annoying. Most region based content is boring (I do NOT care about sports or entertainment gossip or whatever), but the local content in my region is especially cringe inducing, that I feel physically repulsed. On Youtube and Twitter, I rarely encounter such content, it mostly what I follow and things extending from that. But for some reason, I cannot, despite my best efforts, seem to curate my feed on Threads/instagram nor on tiktok; it heavily seems to weight the locally popular content on my recommended feed, and moreover makes it the default view. It even makes it difficult to switch to a following tab, there is an air of "no, don't you dare pick and choose what you want to read/watch, WE will pick what you will view and you will like it". There are so many tiktokers who I like, but I only follow on their youtube shorts channel, because watching on tiktok or instagram makes me ill. Threads is no better, I will be reading a thread from some one I like and one swipe and dammit, another cringe worthy thread about some repulsive nonsense, and I close the app. We are told that social media apps are supposed to entertaining and addictive; youtube and twitter are catering to my addiction, the other apps don't, and if I feel repulsed rather than drawing in, I shan't visit their site and they can't serve me ads to make money. ____ I am not sure if it's because I got into youtube/ twitter early and was able to spend time shifting through dirt to find gold (time I don't seem to be willing to tiktok, I presume)... or something about algorithms each company uses, because I never really liked facebook/instagram and I have closed my facebook account long ago, not because of some moral stand but because I found the app so boring. I only keep instagram because of my old highschool fellows are there, and I like to be able to congratulate them on the birth of their babies, otherwise I rarely interact with the damn app, it never recommends me anything nice to watch, despite the years facebook spent collecting my data. If you are going to invade my privacy and collect my data, why don't I get something useful out of it? you know which popular accounts I follow and which segments my likes fall into, and I spent weeks trying to nudge you into things I like and avoid things I don't like, why don't you learn, dammit?
• davidw 3y ago
  It seems to have enough people that it has some legs. I am really looking forward to a web version of it, but otherwise enjoy it, despite some growing pains. Edit I'm here: https://www.threads.net/@davidnwelton https://www.threads.net/@davidnwelton Edit2 If I think about it some, the biggest drawback about Threads for me is swapping one egocentric billionaire who is rapidly going off the rails for another who is, for the moment, more stable, but has still accumulated a godawful amount of wealth and power. Mastodon seems like the alternative if you really hate that kind of setup, but... it doesn't seem to have much traction.
  • bena 3y ago
    I think the lack of a web client is a big reason. Also, I'm not sure if there's an API for it. If there isn't, that would need to be implemented.
    • yangikan 3y ago
      Also, one can only login through instagram login id.
    • vlunkr 3y ago
      I kind of doubt it will get an API. Seems like Reddit and Twitter have come to regret how much power an API gives to users to sidesteps or whatever they don't like about the platform.
  • MildRant 3y ago
    I would be awestruck if they made a web version. Instagram goes through great pains to screw web users. Apps have more control and collect more data after all.
    • elicash 3y ago
      They have already said it's in the works.
    • standardUser 3y ago
      Embeddable Tweets are a fundamental part of what made Twitter an integral part of our lives. There will be embeddable Threads.
• elicash 3y ago
  I think, in retrospect, they made a mistake in launching quickly before having core features. There was a desire to capitalize on twitter technical issues. > Mr Zuckerberg [...] described the situation as "normal" and said he anticipated retention to improve as new features were added to the app. I think if it was normal, they wouldn't have publicly spiked the football after the admittedly incredible signup numbers. They would have been a bit more humble, said they expected most users to leave soon after, but that this is an encouraging sign (or something to that effect). Maybe a bit more celebratory, but playing with expectations a bit more. They started off with INCREDIBLY humble talking points about likelihood of failure and then I think just got too excited. None of this is to suggest they have no chance. They still have a ton of users and I'd still consider the launch a success overall.
  • ceejayoz 3y ago
    It'd be a lot more compelling to me if it had a "people I follow" feed. I get that they didn't want it to be empty on launch, but at least giving me the option would mean I could at least have a chance of seeing mainly people I know on there.
    • elicash 3y ago
      That launched like a day or two ago -- though it doesn't remember your last setting and is hard to find.
      • ceejayoz 3y ago
        Maybe they're A/B testing it; I don't see any such option.
        • elicash 3y ago
          Update, force close the app, then touch the main logo once you're back in.
          • 3y ago
• SilasX 3y ago
  Okay something that confuses me: to replace Twitter (sorry, X), it has to be something whose posts get linked just as much, from outside that site. I have yet to see a single Threads post get linked anywhere -- not here, not Reddit, not even from Facebook. (Edit: Or at least, I'm too ignorant to realize what such a post would look like, in which case, branding fail.)
  • jedberg 3y ago
    I've seen threads posts linked from Instagram stories. I think that's the main sharing use case right now. I don't know because I haven't bothered signing up for threads.
    • SilasX 3y ago
      That's the problem: if you don't sign up (as I haven't), you can remain blissfully unaware of Threads. The same isn't true of Twitter. I stand corrected on other Meta properties linking it, but, of course, they have to get links outside of that sphere to compete with Twitter on mindshare.
      • lambic 3y ago
        The same is becoming true of Twitter, can't remember the last time I saw an embedded tweet.
        • SilasX 3y ago
          Huh? I see them all the time. And even without that, HN and reddit still link twitter or snapshot it. I have no idea what the Threads app looks like still!
  • davidw 3y ago
    It took a while for people to start linking to Twitter (sorry, X). I'd give it a bit. You can link to stuff though: https://www.threads.net/@carnage4life/post/CvPrxHdr4Y2/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D https://www.threads.net/@carnage4life/post/CvPrxHdr4Y2/?igsh...
• operatingthetan 3y ago
  This is being reported in a strange way. We don't typically write about startups gaining initial signups and then compare them to the active users as if they lost something by not getting 100% of them to engage. Do we even have numbers for what percent of twitter users actively engage versus total user base? I don't think they are doing very bad considering it's mobile only right now.
  • mrcwinn 3y ago
    "Not getting 100%" is a bit of a straw man argument. "Less than half" is significant, particularly when the CEO (to his credit) is calling it out as something that must improve. And it matters to balance the existing narrative from the Verge, which seems to just regurgitate Meta's VP's language about it being a runaway success.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • operatingthetan 3y ago
      >"Not getting 100%" is a bit of a straw man argument. Alright, forget the number. Let's focus on active users versus signups and how it's being reported for Threads.
  • pyrophane 3y ago
    I would assume most of the blame here really lies with Meta. I mean, didn't they: 1. Leverage their IG user base to get a lot of early sign-ups and then... 2. Use those early sign-ups to hype up the platform? They got exactly what they wanted, which was a lot of articles about how fast Threads was growing. They probably knew all along that most of those early sign-ups weren't going turn into active users.
  • mrguyorama 3y ago
    >We don't typically write about startups gaining initial signups and then compare them to the active users as if they lost something by not getting 100% of them to engage. I mean, we should? Startup valuations are full of MAU pumping and straight bullshit, so why shouldn't we judge their numbers with a cynical eye? Meta claimed a number of users the first few days, well, half of them aren't using it anymore, so they aren't "Users"
• AnotherGoodName 3y ago
  New product had a spike of usage at launch.
• terhechte 3y ago
  A part of these users might be europeans? Initially it worked here if you created a US App Store account, but after 10 days they disabled it based on VPN & IP. Like everybody in my European network had the app installed and is not using it anymore because of this.
  • mdrzn 3y ago
    It still works in EU, but it only loads the top post and not the comments.
• laserbeam 3y ago
  > Meta has since added new features, such as separate "following" and "for you"' feeds I haven't used Threads, but it's 2023. People have years of experience and expectations using social media, also probably shorter attention spans. I'm fairly sure that an launch ready MVP in 2023 should be WAY more feature full than 5-10 years ago. I know there are other factors at play here as well regarding retention, but I don't think one can easily recover from a highly popular lauch with uncompetitive features.
• dhosek 3y ago
  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 algorithmic feed on Twitter made a lot of people skeptical of that. Throw in the phone-app-only interface and it’s not where my people want to be. It’s a chicken and egg problem to be sure, and I don’t know where the new writer bar is going to be. It might end up being Threads ultimately, but the big challenge is for whatever new platform to get the movement happening.
  • dhosek 3y ago
    If I had to guess what the indicator of where the new writer bar ends up, it will be wherever Joyce Carol Oates goes. Not because people like her or her tweets necessarily, but that she’s kind of like the black hole at the center of a galaxy, you don’t want to get too close (she’s the queen of the bizarre takes, not to mention her post with a rather disturbing picture of her feet), and yet everything kind of ineluctably ends up orbiting around her anyway.
    • numboreal 3y ago
      She once posted a picture of her keyboard that haunts me.
  • davidw 3y ago
    > Threads failed the smell test early on because it started out with algorithmic feed That was probably a wise decision to seed it with something for people to look at and interact with so they didn't just sign in and see a blank page. The random influencers and other people "go away" pretty quickly if you start following and interacting with people you care more about.
    • anonymousab 3y ago
      A common complaint with Threads was that, no after who you blocked or muted, it's near impossible to get away from a feed filled with influencers and common celebrity gossip nonsense. That seems to be part of the ongoing design intent - not just an aspect of how they wanted to bootstrap the service.
• canadianwriter 3y ago
  While not perfectly matching to actual usage - interest has dropped MASSIVELY. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%201-m&q=threads&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%201-m&q=... It's kind of interesting to see stuff like that.
• ramesh31 3y ago
  As the dust is settling on the last 15 years of this insanity, and the monopolies are being cemented, is Zuck not the only one left standing independently? Of the big guys, the early "wizkid founder" types, who else is left towing the line and controlling the destiny of their company? And who else is maintaining that techno-utopianist optimism publicly? I sort of admire the guy, if only for how every time he speaks, it feels like a time portal to 2009.
  • disgruntledphd2 3y ago
    To be fair to him, he basically just wants to rule the (social) world. And he was much, much younger than the Google founders who are the only real comparison (in that they consistently make money).
  • jhatemyjob 3y ago
    There are others. Zuck has leverage over Facebook so he stays. The others have leverage over other institutions.
• woodpanel 3y ago
  So wait, using an alternative social media platform just because the bourgeoisie doesn’t like the market leader‘s owner’s politics isn’t as convincing for the plebs as it is for the bourgeoisie? who would’ve thought?
• skc 3y ago
  Threads will be alright in the end. They launched it at a very opportune time when Twitter was having massive technical issues. That was enough to get millions of people to kick the tires and more importantly, create awareness. The next time Twitter goes down, and it will any day now, people will again flock to Threads and notice that it got a little better. Twitter will get fixed again, and a lower percentage of Threads users go back again. And repeat.
  • spansoa 3y ago
    And when it hits the E.U market Threads will gain more popularity. If they can just sort out the 'privacy problem' they apparently have. I don't understand the delay here. FB & Insta already has E.U people's data.
    • curiousllama 3y ago
      If I understand correctly, the DMA says you can’t leverage one social network to support another (ie, you can’t drive Threads signups via the IG Network). Meta chose quick growth over European users.
  • dgrin91 3y ago
    > The next time Twitter goes down, and it will any day now People have been saying this since the day Elon took over... but has it really gone down that much? More than other tech products? E.g. how many outages have the big cloud providers had in the last year? When I hear people say 'any day now' it reads like they are looking for any excuse to say 'mars man bad'.
    • AlexandrB 3y ago
      I don't know about outages, but Twitter's website has become completely erratic for me. Sometime it will load replies, sometimes it won't. Sometimes it will login-wall content, sometimes it won't. Sometimes I just get an error page. Clicking on a Twitter link today is like rolling the dice on whether you'll actually see anything or not.
• mkl95 3y ago
  This is a relatively common phenomenon in multiplayer games. The most famous (infamous?) recent case is probably New World, which peaked at 900k+ concurrent users and lately peaks at ~20k every day [1] [1] https://steamcharts.com/app/1063730 https://steamcharts.com/app/1063730
  • AlexandrB 3y ago
    To be fair New World shipped with dupes and other game-breaking bugs. Threads at least works as a microblogging website.
• mgdev 3y ago
  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.
  • kridsdale3 3y ago
    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.
    • disgruntledphd2 3y ago
      The best thing about (maybe this didn't make it to deltoid) was that they counted degrees of freedom for the t stats based on the number of days the experiment was running, which was incredibly effective in stopping people launching broken crap.
• downWidOutaFite 3y ago
  I'm rooting for Bluesky, they've been loosening up their invites and I've got most of my twitter friends on there and active.
  • gdulli 3y ago
    The email in my bio would love to get started there if you happen to have any invites left.
  • vehemenz 3y ago
    There's Bluesky the platform, and then there are Bluesky's users. The platform itself still looks promising, but bsky.social is captured by some of the worst people on the Internet. At the end of the day, I don't think it's realistic for normal people to bring their own network.
    • downWidOutaFite 3y ago
      Some of the worst huh? I think I've heard the same about twitter often.
  • romesc 3y ago
    I'm very curious about Bluesky, still. If anyone's got an invite to kick around, romescpro@gmail.com =]. I am earnestly trying to go all in on ActivityPub these days.
• ploden 3y ago
  I checked it out, but I won't use it. Social media in its current form is exploitation.
• owlbynight 3y ago
  BlueSky is going to win. Domain verification and custom feeds (user-generated firehose filters) are its killer features. It's already better than Twitter, and it's still behind invite codes as they refine it. Once brands realize that they can utilize custom feeds to reach potential customers granularly instead of -- or in addition to -- paying for advertising, it's going to be over for Twitter. Twitter could introduce something similar to compete, but they shit-canned all of their talent, and in the process hamstrung their ability to innovate.
• kyriakos 3y ago
  Maybe it'd have done better if it launched worldwide. I still haven't seen the app and I do use twitter. A lot of people I follow are from Europe so threads won't have most of the content I'd want anyway.
• tschellenbach 3y ago
  ok but this is very normal for social apps. doesn't really tell you anything. long term retention matters
• lopkeny12ko 3y ago
  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.
  • anifru 3y ago
    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.
    • explain 3y ago
      87.6% of Twitter active-seconds are mobile, according to Elon's most recent data. Would've expected closer to 70/30 personally.
      • lopkeny12ko 3y ago
        And do you actually believe this statistic? I don't know a single person who willingly prefers a limited, bogged-down experience of any product (social media or otherwise) over a full-fledged desktop client.
        • User23 3y ago
          Most people don't take their laptop to the bathroom.
        • bhauer 3y ago
          I don't think it's a matter of preference. Of course I prefer doing all of my computing on my desktop computer. But I don't take my desktop computer with me to the grocery store. And I use Twitter to entertain myself when I'm waiting in line at the grocery store, for example. When I am at my desktop computer, I'm much less likely to be interested in using Twitter. That said, one of many reasons I didn't bother creating a Threads account is precisely that reason: no desktop client. Unless forced, I won't use anything that is exclusively available on mobile devices.
• icey 3y ago
  I'd use it a lot more if it had a web client.
• us0r 3y ago
  I followed people who post yet when I open the app my first 2 posts (the only posts visible) are from accounts I'd never follow (right now Paris Hilton and ESPN) and could care less about. I don't want to scroll through their suggested bullshit trying to get to what I actually want to read. Maybe this works when you are following no one.
  • mh- 3y ago
    This is what killed it for me. There was also no obvious way for me to "train" their recommendations, even if I was willing to tolerate an algorithmic-only feed.
  • voisin 3y ago
    Meta has no ability to not try to control your attention and divert it toward ads. They are institutionally incapable of anything other than control and divert. It is why I didn’t sign up for Threads and wouldn’t use Oculus if I were given one for free. The only Meta product I have access to is Facebook because my community is obsessed with FB Marketplace and posting upcoming IRL events on FB rather than email. I hate how Meta infiltrated our lives and now cannot be excised.
    • rjh29 3y ago
      Oculus has no ads though. It has a store with recommended apps, which is no different to Steam.
• user6723 3y ago
  Why post somewhere where you'll get shadowbanned when you're not even doing anything wrong. Threads is like a fake internet.
  • gochi 3y ago
    Not sure Threads even has the ability to be shadowbanned yet lol. Maybe you just mean banned.
• robotnikman 3y ago
  I sure hope it does not become another Twitter. Having Twitter as the source of truth people went to for everything was not great, and when you only have 256 characters to express something I feel that leads to very shallow and low quality content. Threads would be just the same thing except owned by Meta now. I would rather see Mastodon and federated services succeed, but it is not the most user friendly. Then again, just because something is big doesn't mean it's the best.
• cvhashim04 3y ago
  I’m trying to use social media and twitter less. I used Threads for a bit but it just reminded me how much of a time waste these apps are.
• max_lameme 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • kstrauser 3y ago
    I run a Mastodon server. It respects the 1st amendment: I say anything I want there, and you can go make your own server if you want to say something different. And in no known cases has the US government told anyone they're not allowed to talk there, which is the only way the 1st amendment would be relevant to a social media platform.
• adam_arthur 3y ago
  Threads launched without the ability to only see the people you follow. To me that marked it as doomed from the start. Most people use Twitter to follow specific niches or topic areas, not as a general conversational platform. If I follow even one account that's posting low quality content at any sort of frequency, it seriously degrades the experience. It's really a headscratcher how they launched without that. I guess the idea is that ad placing is easier if you have an algorithmic feed instead?
  • bhauer 3y ago
    This is probably its most important failure. Ironically, the people who refuse to use the "Following" tab on Twitter are, I expect, the same people who are most dissatisfied with Twitter. If you use the Following tab, Twitter remains pretty damn great. It's when you allow an algorithm to feed you stuff that the experience can become something between unsatisfactory and toxic.
    • gochi 3y ago
      The "following" tab inserts algorithmic posts, and has for years now. Tossing in likes and other recommendation experiments. This means that even if you carefully only follow people you specifically want to see on your feed, if they start liking stuff that interests them but does not fit their feed, you now see it. Some of these aspects have changed, but again, they are part of a larger recommendation experiment that twitter constantly pushes because a strict following feed = less money less engagement. You cannot curate twitter as well as you think you can. It would be nice if that was possible though.
  • rumblerock 3y ago
    I was enjoying the first few days and went on a campaign to mute as many of these low quality accounts that had been ported in from Instagram as possible. Then I just got bored, and realized it was just reclaiming the time that I had gained by quitting Instagram in the first place.
• lcmchris 3y ago
  They've probably built something no one wanted and their launch success makes it hard to see between the lines. This is always been a problem with tech giants coming out with new products. I sometimes even wonder if it's better to launch products like these under a different name/umbrella so that they can get some real users.
• andrewstuart 3y ago
  I only use desktop Twitter, so without a desktop client I can’t use threads.
• rvz 3y ago
  So far out of all the Twitter / X alternatives and competitors, Threads is the clear serious contender. Especially one that has 50M+ active users (as admitted by Zuck) out of the gate in less than a month with 100M+ registered users even without launching in the EU. The rest don't have a chance at all and are as good as dead or cannot handle the amount of users that both Twitter/X or Threads has. It is clear that both of them will co-exist and retention always matters, with any so-called 'exodus'. For Threads it is early days. On the other hand over at Twitter / X [0] it seems far from 'dying', from the months of nonsense from the media who exaggerated the immediate collapse of Twitter / X last year which never happened. Perhaps it is time to admit that you have been manipulated by the doomsayers who's only mission is to post clickbait and attract your eyeballs to their articles spreading nonsense to grift for affiliate links. [0] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1684978651857596429/photo/1 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1684978651857596429/phot...
• partiallypro 3y ago
  The app is missing so many core components, no DMs, no web interface, no trends, it's hard to find people. This absolutely has a market; but honestly given how half-baked it is, they probably should have waited for another Musk crucial mistake, which is inevitable.
  • coldcode 3y ago
    It's missing everything necessary to make it for you and your interests; instead, you get what Zuck wants you to see. No hashtags (needed to build an audience if you want to post about things or find interesting people to follow), and it's not on the web (given how completely shitty the Instagram web interface is, they could care less about the web). I think they released it to capitalize on Elon's stupidity but with something that barely works. I'm not interested in some generic stream of celebrities and influencers I could care less about.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
• trashface 3y ago
  To me it seemed like it was mostly a new front end (of sorts) for the existing instagram userbase.
• TheCaptain4815 3y ago
  Their focus on brands over features at launch might be 'backfiring' as the platform itself seems so fake.
• dbg31415 3y ago
  It pushed a bunch of sponsored ad content that wasn’t targeted correctly, and never really showed me anything from my friends. It got annoying fast, so it got deleted.
• fourseventy 3y ago
  It turns out that the network effect is indeed powerful.
• andrewstuart 3y ago
  I can’t see how threads can be “launched” without a desktop client. That’s not even an MVP, it’s non existent. Some of these supposed genius tech leaders are really showing themselves to have very questionable decision making capability. It was also extremely off putting that it was so tightly linked to instagram. They also made a mistake by not leveraging peoples desire to get their own Twitter handle on threads. Failing also to launch is Europe. Honestly it doesn’t seem that hard, if you weird the resources that Zuckerberg does. You say to them “clone Twitter”. It’s not like Twitter is the biggest technical challenge in the world to clone… why couldn’t Meta do that? The outcome looks like what you’d expect - the Meta equivalent of a Musk Starship launch.
  • wodenokoto 3y ago
    Wasn't Instagram iPhone-only for a very long time?
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • voisin 3y ago
      Yes and their web presence only very recently allowed you to upload from your computer. It was half baked on the web for a very, very long time. Also, WhatsApp and Instagram still don’t have an iPad app. Given the scale of their users and the company’s resources it is unfathomable to me that they haven’t tried to make their products more seamless experiences across the devices users use. But then I remember it is Meta and I would be hard pressed to think of a more user-hostile company.
  • hn1986 3y ago
    Adam Mosseri mentioned their intentions to get an MVP going. It actually runs smoothly and iterating quickly. Web version probably coming in few weeks. It's already surpassed Mastodon and Bluesky easily. and there's no conspiracy theorists on there.. like qanon or white nationalists. https://www.axios.com/2022/10/30/elon-musk-paul-pelosi-tweet-rumor https://www.axios.com/2022/10/30/elon-musk-paul-pelosi-tweet...
• davidkuennen 3y ago
  They should've launched globally. Not including Europe was a big mistake in my opinion.
  • the_70x 3y ago
    Or just the opposite. We don't need another social media platform
  • BoorishBears 3y ago
    Wasn't at all, they couldn't even get a desktop client in place, why would they want to play with GDPR? This is ChatGPT again, over all Europe will be increasingly isolated from the rest of the internet because their politicians were tricked into thinking they had more influence over the forefront technology than they actually do: You can't be a steward of good policy from the back of the train, you'll just get kicked off the train.
    • _xivi 3y ago
      I wouldn't call 'Threads' the forefront of technology. And I'm sure people in Europe have no regrets over their decision to better control their data. Not over a product from Meta anyway.
      • BoorishBears 3y ago
        Yeah just like AI doesn't matter. A tool I made got a lot of traction in a very specific niche of knowledge workers: 10,000 people a week doing what was a 10 hour task in 90 seconds. It felt great blocking the EU instead of adding a cookie banner. Weirdly enough California adopted privacy legislation in a less braindead way so they get to own their data and use my product.
• Animats 3y ago
  Did users "sign up" for Threads, or was it some kind of forced install for existing Facebook users?
  • TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
    It's connected to Instagram, not to Facebook. But I think existing Instagram users don't automatically get a Threads account.
  • ksherlock 3y ago
    It uses the instagram username/password but it is a separate app that needs to be explicitly installed.
• hardwaregeek 3y ago
  - Not letting you see just posts from your follows sucked. - Building up a good group of people to follow takes a long time - A lot of the people who I follow on Instagram I do not want to follow on Twitter. - Just felt like an inorganic extension of Instagram. Like the difference between a fake real estate developer created neighborhood and a real one.
  • hn1986 3y ago
    they've added a Following feed (only posts from your follows). it's pretty nifty and best of all there's no toxic users from Twitter (qanon, conspiracy theorists, extremists, white nationalists, taliban)
  • timeon 3y ago
    > Not letting you see just posts from your follows sucked This is why I stopped using Instagram. I have been there since around 2010. Moment when I realized it's waste of time was when feed contained content I did not followed while missing some that I followed. Irony is that pre-2010 I was proponent of algorithmic feed. Young and naive.
• srvmshr 3y ago
  I tried using Threads religiously for few days alongside Twitter: * The feed is chaotic & no guarantees people (and by extension, Topics) whom you followed will show up primarily. Seeing a machine learning thread between a Barbie post & scantily clad influencer is bizarre. * The feed is jumpy with tiny accidental refreshes. You could be reading the thread and do a deep dive, and come out to find the timeline slightly/significantly different. * No message/DM. No bookmark feature. No topic suggestions - Just pure Instagram-like scrolling. The good part is no ads. But that could be a matter of time. Overtaking Twitter in engagement will be hard. Social networks have some inertia & needs some key users to remain successful (I forget the paper name - but it describes growth/implosion of network graphs when some key community members used/left. Like a hole in the graph. If any HNer knows about it - It came about 7-8 years ago.)
  • dorfsmay 3y ago
    And no browser version, mobile only!
  • the_snooze 3y ago
    >The feed is chaotic & no guarantees people (and by extension, Topics) whom you followed will show up primarily. Seeing a machine learning thread between a Barbie post & scantily clad influencer is bizarre. I follow some local weather sources. The algorithm decided that I'm really big into weather and started feeding me weather sources in other cities. Thanks, Threads. Good job trying to guess what I want instead of just listening to what I've clearly opted into.
    • vhold 3y ago
      I'll never figure out why it turned my entire feed into NBA players and teams, I didn't follow a single one. I had to mute dozens of accounts to get it to show me something else. I actually found it kind of entertaining though, they could make the mute button a little more satisfying and then you'd have a game there.
• gabereiser 3y ago
  In other news, man-child wars between tech bros end with both failing to find product fit and alienating all their customers. Facebooks growth was because it was where your friends were posting. Twitter growth was because of where influential people posted that you were interested in their (brief) thoughts. X was a failed payments platform that eventually became PayPal and sold to eBay (due to eBay being their only true partner at the time). Facebook/Meta keeps buying their way into the cool club only to realize they’re not cool. The bodies of friendstr, MySpace, phpbb, and even reddit now, as the tech bros learn that “features” aren’t what bring people in. People do. Make it friendly to people like the growth days. Not friendly to corporations so you can milk more advertising dollars. I’ll stay on the “I deleted my meta and I’m not coming back” fence.
  • skydhash 3y ago
    > I’ll stay on the “I deleted my meta and I’m not coming back” fence. I deleted it and, so far, no noticeable impact on my life (and that's in a country where almost everyone who has a smartphone is guaranteed to be on Facebook). Almost nothing of worth is being posted on them. The pitfall of social media is that they don't reflect social interactions. The algorithm process is unnatural. I only want to hear about my friends and a selection of people and institutions I choose. I don't need to hear about LeBron James because I watched a video clip. Or be shown ads for some weird games, as I've not played on my phone or computers for ages. The simplified interaction mechanism missing downvote/dislike/hate is another thing I dislike. If I can approve, I should be able to disapprove. That's why I prefer Reddit to Twitter. What's at the top is either something useful or echoing the culture of the community. I've been interacting with forums more these days, and it's a breath of fresh air. No engagement, only discussions and information. Some are showing ads, but I don't mind as it's always pertaining to the subject of the forum.
  • pessimizer 3y ago
    You're trying to bring in money, though, not people.
• rglullis 3y ago
  Reading at the comments here, I'm baffled to see all the people trying to find a reasonable justification for why they are not using it. (They didn't launch a web app, they didn't launch in Europe, they didn't do X, they should've done Y) It should be a lot simpler. We should all have learned by now that any and every product from Facebook is radioactive waste. Hopefully Threads is indeed DOA. Anyway, we should have been asking ourselves why is it that 100M people even managed to sign up in the first place and how to make sure they don't even try again.
• TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
  I imagine that a lot of people created accounts to secure a good username, with no real intention of using it yet anyway.
  • upon_drumhead 3y ago
    The usernames are your insta name, so no gold rush to be had really.
    • TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
      Ah. I knew it was connected to Instagram. I suppose it makes sense that it uses the same usernames.
• karaterobot 3y ago
  In my experience, which I hope is not that unusual, it's pretty typical for at least half the people who sign up on launch to not come back. A lot of people just want to check it out. I do notice that we are not told how much less than half of the people stayed, though...
• justapassenger 3y ago
  It’s super funny to see people framing that as Threads failing. They totally may fail. But even after that initial drop (which is expected, for something that managed to get so much hype) they’re likely still the biggest app in the history in terms of DAU in few weeks after the launch. And if there’s one thing Meta knows how to do is to copy successful idea and slowly grind the growth till it dominates market.
  • potatototoo99 3y ago
    What is one thing Meta succeeded in copying and beat the original?
    • crazygringo 3y ago
      Well, MySpace for starters. Facebook Marketplace seems to have totally replaced Craiglist as well, where I live, for buying/selling. Facebook Messenger took over e.g. MSN for a lot of people, the News Feed replaced a dedicated news site for a lot of people, and so forth. Events replaced Evite I think (or similar?), FB Photos basically replaced Flickr back in the day...
    • mkl 3y ago
      MySpace? Most of the other pre-Facebook social media sites too. It's not about being an exact copy, but sharing enough features that it can subsume those roles.
    • justapassenger 3y ago
      2 most recent - stories basically destroyed Snaps growth potential and Reels are on track to overshadow TikTok.
      • cubefox 3y ago
        I don't see Reels being anywhere close to that. YouTube Shorts seems to be a more successful TikTok copy.
    • madeofpalk 3y ago
• hazebooth 3y ago
  I want threads to succeed so badly. It's the only app I've ever actually liked the UI of. I've tried numerous Mastodon apps (Ivory included), BlueSky, Twitter, and all of their web variants. I find myself returning to Threads even if the functionality is limited, because it's just that enjoyable. I'm rooting for 'em!
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• throwaway070077 3y ago
  It's easy to see why the user churn in Threads is on a spiral. A simple measure is trying to follow a timeline for the Women's World Cup happening now. Crickets. The Instagram easy sign-up got Threads its users and it's the same feed algorithm which will churn the users. If nothing changes by the start of the NFL season, Threads will be niche. It's a darn shame.
• docflabby 3y ago
  The real question is which is dying quicker Facebook or Twitter?
• nologic01 3y ago
  Its inevitable that online social media platforms will split in two types. The type I that attracts those with something authentic to say. And the type II that attracts those with something to sell. The first type is the future fediverse. Its the 15%. The art house cinema. The colorful city center street. Flexible, innovative, human centric, low budget, soul nourishing. The second type is Meta-stasized and coming in X number of mutations. Its the 85%. The strip mall. The plastic, fake, mass consumption machine. Lucrative, manipulative, exhausting yet unavoidable for the titillation addicted masses. There is no way you can eliminate either one of the two types in the short term. Type I was created against incredible odds. The future will be a bit easier. Type II is, alas, the embodiment of dazed and confused, unsettled society that is unlikely to heal anytime soon. So let us part ways and live in peace.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • mr_00ff00 3y ago
    What social media is Type 1? I feel like the history of the internet is social media apps starting close to Type 1 and becoming Type 2.
  • tamimio 3y ago
    Thank you, that’s how I see it too -maybe with different ratios-, and that’s why I’m happy to see the traditional corporate sponsored social media platforms are crumbling like Twitter/Reddit/threads, it’s overall and in the long term better for societies.
• jurassic 3y ago
  Threads badly needs search and trending topics. Once they have those features, it will do much better. The product as it currently exists makes it exceedingly difficult to find conversations you are interested in about current events.
• toshk 3y ago
  I feel like they dropped the ball on content. Most complaints I've read is that thread's content is just boring. Most instagram influencers are visually oriented and don't translate well to textual thread. If they would have been able to get that right from the start, they could have kept a lot more. Either through collabrations, or pushed influencers who get engangement on long text posts.
• coding123 3y ago
  So people think Threads is a failure if it grows 100M in 3 days and over 23 days goes down to 50M. You know for a fact that it it slowly grew from 0 to 50M over 6 months it would have been considered a smashing success.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• sourcecodeplz 3y ago
  With all the money Meta has (even more if they didn't blew so much on Metaverse) they should have built some kind of monetization opportunities for the users from the get go. Something like Twitter is doing now. Nothing attracts people more than money. Give 1/10/100 USD per month to super active users that attract views and engagement.
• bastard_op 3y ago
  Like most things, speculators soaked up all the potentially valuable names to resell, so not really using the service anyways, and the minimal few that use it realized already it's a ghost town.
• mvdtnz 3y ago
  I tried it during the first week and just found all of the posting to be unbearably milquetoast. I understand that people have a problem with some of the more extreme elements of Twitter, it's a reasonable concern. But the last thing I need is an aggressively Disneyfied algorithm picking posts for me.
• Pixie_Dust 3y ago
  Is there a metric for how fast your new account gets banned from: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Reddit, Threads and Twitter. I'm asking for a friend /s
• etchalon 3y ago
  It is incredibly frustrating that people seem to be operating and commenting from a place of: 1. Twitter is going to fail quickly. 2. Threads is going to succeed quickly. Neither is true, and constantly re-checking the narrative against those binary outcomes (complete failure! Unmistakable success!) is ludicrous and distracting.
• ChildOfChaos 3y ago
  I mean it's fairly simple, I don't know why so much news is being generated by this the past few days and discussions too? They shoehorned a new service/app ontop of there existing user base, a huge amount of people went to check it out because it was forced down their throats and then a reasonable amount decided it was a waste of time and a few people are still playing with it, likely a lot of wannabe influences seeing it as a chance to get an early lead on a new platform. It will likely die further, except facebook and social media being as toxic as they are and as this interview suggests, facebook are going to add more 'hooks' to get people addicted or dark patterns etc to drive usage. Everything here is what you would expect, so who cares?
• a13o 3y ago
  I view this entire saga more as an unbundling of microblog topics. One website had all the microblog topics, and now they will be spread across N websites. If you're viewing this as a king of the hill scenario, you've got the wrong metaphor. This is humpty dumpty having a great fall. It won't ever be put back together. Not by Meta, not by Twitter, not by anyone.
  • erulabs 3y ago
    If the world is going back to microblogs — does that mean we need something more akin to Yahoo/Geocities than to Google/Facebook?
    • chipsrafferty 3y ago
      [dead]
• drusepth 3y ago
  Ironically, most complaints I see about Threads (as a still-active user) is that it has too many users (chronological feeds pushing content too far down, overwhelmed by advertisers already, and little to no sense of community).
• tennisflyi 3y ago
  I just want a good night. I’m around one million
• DueDilligence 3y ago
  [dead]
• dahwolf 3y ago
  It's pretty common that after a peak of new signups, most do not convert to long term active users. This doesn't even take into account that most "active users" tend to never post anything, they just leech. They still count as MAU. I'm sure that Meta has plenty of ways to boost that number in the long term but overall I find the entire thing underwhelming. Threads is text-based Instagram. But not even that as you can very well include photos. It has exactly the same shallow culture as Instagram: commercial, flat, vain. Meta has openly expressed that it's disinterested or even hostile to news/journalism making their way to the platform (which comes with a lot of political flame-wars), instead to focus on making it a "fun" platform. Quite obviously because advertisers prefer networks without controversy. Users may self-censor as on Threads the link to your real name is not very far away. Many users may have a real name Insta account linked up which in turn is linked to your Facebook account. Even if not visibility linked to your real name, internally you should assume it's there. So who knows what happens to all those accounts when you step over the line in Threads? Hence, it's not Twitter which is defined by the culture war taking the main stage. Twitter is raw, edgy and toxic. It's also known for its real-time coverage of events, which Threads so far lacks. It also produces quite a lot of original content, whether they be memes or otherwise. You'll find none of that originating on Meta networks. As Twitter seems on its way down, especially high follower users (such as journalists) are lost. There is no longer a "cultural network" where you push a message and get reach. None of the alternatives work for this purpose either. I have no idea what will become of Twitter, but I do know to keep an open mind as we live in wild times. Just because Musk is a chaos monkey does not mean that it will not eventually rebound or even surpass old Twitter.
  • ghaff 3y ago
    It’s hard to say. What I see is a lot of people in my network really scaling back or dropping Twitter and maybe playing with the alternatives but not really embracing them. I suspect that for many it will be a case of “Social media was nice while it lasted.”
    • strangattractor 3y ago
      Sounds like Musk did them a favor.
• crtified 3y ago
  We already have a thing where everyone on the internet can congregate, then split off and find sub-communities of interest (such as this excellent one right here) to participate in. It's called The Internet. I don't see the attraction of turning that into a massive, homogenised, centralised commercial product under private control. Never have.
• roody15 3y ago
  Not surprised the app really doesn’t seem to have a purpose. Cannot search by hashtag. Not sorted by time … cannot post on news / politics. It’s really just a generated text / pic thread for content consumption featuring mostly ads and payed celebrity marketing. I used it for a few days and honestly cannot think of any upside.
• tracerbulletx 3y ago
  It's still fine, they created an escape outlet for journalists and public figures in various communities to escape to if they finally get pushed out of Twitter. A lot of them haven't left yet because they're attached to their current following, but if it starts becoming unbearable or they start to lose reach they may pull over enough communities that it can supplant the role in the culture Twitter used to have. As far as I know the reasons people use twitter are different, there's tech twitter, and art twitter, and media twitter, and corporate twitter and people engage with them for different reasons. Threads would need to replace those reasons.
  • ghaff 3y ago
    I suspect that the “Burn it all down” crowd view Twitter through the outrage content lens whereas there are a lot of different communities.
• ralphc 3y ago
  I signed up on Threads shortly after launch to reserve my username, haven't been on much since. If it takes off I have the username I want, if not, meh.
• VincentEvans 3y ago
  People I spoke too are super happy Threads appeared and as their favorite accounts are gradually making their way there - feel they can now consume the content they like without Twitter’s ever-present toxic shit. There was no popular and populated alternative to Twitter. Now there is. As I watch this unfold - I think that Twitter is now worth half of what it was a month ago. And Threads soaked in all that value. Not sure how anyone would call it a failure.
• nerdbert 3y ago
  It worked for a few days and then stopped loading replies. Maybe it's because I'm in the EU?
• davidork 3y ago
  Just let it go. Don't try to resurrect the horse from the greasy spot on the ground where it was formerly beaten to death. It's all a cancerous detriment to society. If you wanna talk to people online... Discord, irc, forums. Let social media die... Let the trash fire burn itself out instead of lighting new dumpsters on fire in hopes of it being the next big thing. That sort of thing (social media) is bad, and we (human beings) just need to let them go away. It's all a hives of propagandists, "influencers", shit posting and lonely people seeking external validation shouting into the void.
• sakopov 3y ago
  What's the point switching from Twitter to this? Threads looks like a carbon copy without all of the engaging conversations, monetization and with all of the same censorship problems.
  • tw04 3y ago
    I don't utilize either, but presumably because it's not run by a man-child who changes the rules at his own whim? Elon's attempts at monetization aren't just driving advertisers away. My buddy who has been addicted to Twitter for years has almost entirely dumped it after all the recent limits placed on direct messages recently. He's not going to pay for blue, and he and his buddy's would rather move their conversations to discord or text messages (or Threads) than deal with Twitter.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• rewgs 3y ago
  Someone at Insta, please read this: - Give me a timeline that shows only the people I follow. - Give me an "explore" section so I can find new people. - That's right, exactly like Instagram does it. I'll use it if you do this. I know I'm not alone.
• danielvaughn 3y ago
  If they don’t continue to iterate on the product it’s gonna die. I see no reason to post on Threads, it’s like Twitter but only for my friends, and no hashtags.
• skhavari 3y ago
  I would not expect tech writers to understand retention rates of mobile apps, but you can search your way to some [meh] data pretty quickly. This is lazy reporting. https://www.statista.com/statistics/259329/ios-and-android-app-user-retention-rate/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/259329/ios-and-android-a...
  • thuuuomas 3y ago
    > why didn’t those idiots use this unverifiable data I disapprove of?
• _ea1k 3y ago
  Where are all the articles questioning Zuckerberg's sanity because of all his bad decisions that led to this? I know that they'd be mostly false, but we get those about that other site, so why not about Threads?
  • porkbeer 3y ago
    Yeah, its just a popularity thing. You would get greyed into oblivion suggesting him or tesla were any less than god sent 5 years ago here. Its sad so much kneeJerk emotion gets attached to services based on users or owners. Im not a fan of either platform or owner, but I can relate to your interpretation.
• djohnston 3y ago
  My beef with threads is that it’s just like IG. I was promised a text based social but lo and behold, I open it and find more sexy people posting short form videos. It’s so boring.
  • tomrod 3y ago
    My initial experience was I had to access through an app on my phone. No thanks, I am not interested in contributing to the surveillance economy anymore. No data-vacuuming apps, no WEI.
• richardw 3y ago
  A very short time with TikTok showed me I need to delete it instantly. It was too good at delivering crack. Twitter is pretty good, mixing up my follows and some random stuff that I enjoy. Threads is useless at figuring me out. Inane self promotion, all noise and no signal whatsoever.
• pmontra 3y ago
  Wake me up the first time news (web, tv, radio, paper) say that somebody twitted something on Threads. I keep seeing tweets embedded in web pages and referenced on TV. No mention of Threads after the launch.
• cannibalXxx 3y ago
  I don't know how funny a social network is that to be part of it you have to have an instagram account. I didn't find anything misleading on this social network I signed up to take a look as a programmer and I already regretted it
• tjpnz 3y ago
  Contrarian opinion. I don't think the microblogging concept holds much relevance for the bulk of internet users, especially not in 2023. The best Meta could hope for is to convert a percentage of existing Twitter users. Shallow platitudes of kindness aren't going to help either, especially not from someone who once referred to his userbase as dumbfucks, among other unkind words.
• ggambetta 3y ago
  It doesn't work for me :( I can see the feed but pretty much anything else I try to do results in an error message. Can't post, can't reply, can't see anything on my Threads and Replies tabs,..
• kkwteh 3y ago
  I’m still waiting for Threads to be launched in Europe.
• ggm 3y ago
  If you want an example of "inside the bubble" it's thinking any of the social media channels, private or not for profit represent a realistic cohort of community engagement comparable to "the people have spoken" It's some people, sometimes, in some contexts, saying some things which go to opinion. It's no better or worse than a radio or TV "vox pop" and equally biassed. Or that eternal source of truth "the man in the street you met in the pub that time" or a taxi driver. I think it's social cancer and I regret ever participating and taking it seriously. It certainly caused me harm, to my own sense of self and to personal relations and trust. Do yourself a favour and drop out. By all means stay if you enjoy it, but at least drop out of any belief and claim its a true expression of public views in the wide.
  • majewsky 3y ago
    Your argument appears incomplete. Either there is some method of obtaining "a true expression of public views in the wide", in which case: What is it? Or there is no such method, in which case: Why do you specifically advise to drop social media channels? What makes them less valuable as a method of gauging public views than, say, talking to a taxi driver, or an opinion poll? You are suggesting that I drop every belief that each one of these parts accurately represents the whole, but then why specifically ask us to drop out of one of these methods over any other?
    • ggm 3y ago
      Nothing makes them less valuable. They're mostly just as valuable. The problem is belief they're more representative, more "real" I advise to drop because of cumulative deleterious effects on my mental health and real world social relationships. Some people may have more resilience. I think most people become trapped in mostly narcissistic behaviour.
    • seydor 3y ago
      Most people just don't want to shout things, and the ones that do are a tiny unrepresentative minority. Imho it's that simple, and has been from the get-go
  • thomashop 3y ago
• bg24 3y ago
  Forcing engagement is in Meta’s culture. Out of the blue, suddenly I have started seeing friends notifications from my contacts list. 9 out of 10 times, people on Instagram will generally accept this. But Twitter/Threads users are different. Instagram culture may not necessarily work for Theeads.
• seydor 3y ago
  Another proof that, without porn, you cannot win
• sva_ 3y ago
  The fact that it is tied to Instagram, i.e. you need an Instagram account to sign up for it, was what made me not even try it.
• tehwebguy 3y ago
  I tried it again today. The feed seemed improved (people I follow) for five minutes, then it was pure garbage again (random awful accounts I don’t follow). I am not worried about Facebook’s AI anymore, it’s clear they can't infer anything about me even after I blocked 100+ accounts.
• funshed 3y ago
  I don't think launching an MVP (which this was) works when there is such a large established monopoly your trying to disrupt. Especially as the MVP offers nothing new?
• jug 3y ago
  This is expected as the insane growth and usage as it was released in tandem with Typical Crazy Elon Moves was clearly unsustainable for years, much less even a few months. As for success, ask me again in 2024.
• jdlyga 3y ago
  It was a reaction against Elon Musk, and the desire to find a Twitter-like social network that's more human focused with less news, etc. But it's very bare bones right now. You can't do a lot of the common things that made Twitter so good, such as searching to see if AWS us-east-1 is down by people posting tweets.
• MrYellowP 3y ago
  I don't know why this is even newsworthy, except for propaganda reasons. Strong increase at the start, then a relatively quick drop, slowly declining to un-hyped levels of participation. This isn't news, this is common. Strong initial growth is usually based on hype. There was tons of hype. The user count dropping so quickly means that the people, who joined because of hype (whatever sub-reason covered by the term), are leaving. Given that it's facebook, the hype and potential participation rate was gigantic. It's a bubble. Bubbles pop. More news at 11.