3 ms·

Absolutely this is failure. Twitter/threads is (or should be) a highly viral application. New users should find themselves compelled to use the product and co

Absolutely this is failure. Twitter/threads is (or should be) a highly viral application. New users should find themselves compelled to use the product and compelled to encourage others to use it. With a 100 million user head start, if they were succeeding this shoukd have immediately resulted in the viral loop being triggered into explosive growth. It’s a huge failure. Not necessarily unrecoverable, but absolutely a gargantuan fail. 100,000,000 signups should ignite your viral engine and blast into orbit. Enough functionality to be viral was the MV part of “Minimum Viable” for Threads.

justapassenger 3y ago
Got it. Unless they had everyone on earth signed up by now, it’s a huge failure.
- andrewstuart 3y ago
  Facebook had to contain the growth. People were battering down the door for access.
  - justapassenger 3y ago
    Can you remind me how they got 100M users in the first week? You seriously compare growth at the planet scale with a growth at few universities?
peter422 3y ago
By this logic Twitter should also be growing, as it’s even better than threads in terms of content. Yet not only is Twitter not growing but it’s shrinking. I think your expectations for success in this vertical are off.
- andrewstuart 3y ago
  Google says “Twitter has approximately 450 million monthly active users as of 2022”. I’d say that’s probably broadly the number of potential Twitter users. If you think user growth should be exponential to all people in the planet, then that is false.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  in my world of twitter/x I see no signs of shrinking...
  - monetus 3y ago
    I clicked through from the sibling link to Elon's profile, and only see posts from last April and older? The reach of the site is.. not reaching. It is pulling back.
- dahfizz 3y ago
  > Yet not only is Twitter not growing but it’s shrinking. Source? Musk just tweeted about a new all-time monthly user record. It's not impossible that he would lie, but my impression is not at all that Twitter is shrinking. There's a whole lot of discussion about Twitter shrinking and high profile people leaving, but they don't. Stephen king comes to mind as a big critic that threatened over and over to leave, but he hasn't. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1684978651857596429 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1684978651857596429
  - LordAtlas 3y ago
    You realise he tweeted a line graph without an X-axis?
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Musk just tweeted about a new all-time monthly user record. It's not impossible that he would lie On the rare occasion he makes non-trivial, falsifiable claims, its pretty common that they turn out to be other-than-accurate, yes. > but my impression is not at all that Twitter is shrinking. My impression is that the set of advertisers (not regular Blue users, though they are a different kind of advertiser paying for reach) are narrowing and moving downmarket in a way which would take truly enormous numbers of Blue users to compensate for. Whether its shrinking or not is somewhat beside the point.
    - dahfizz 3y ago
      It wouldn't surprise me if Twitter revenue is down. It also wouldn't surprise me if Twitter revenue is up. Unfortunately, with it being private I don't think we'll ever know. > Whether its shrinking or not is somewhat beside the point. In a thread entirely about Twitter/threads user count, whether it's shrinking is the entire point.
  - rpgbr 3y ago
    Half a billion users? Is Elon counting everyone who sees an embed tweet as a user?
  - threeseed 3y ago
sanderjd 3y ago
I honestly think this is a very silly take. I don't think any of this is how any of this works. Threads attracted two kinds of people: 1. People coming mostly from instagram / tiktok who had never considered using Twitter because it had an established reputation and they knew it wasn't the kind of product for them, and 2. People switching from Twitter because they love Twitter-the-idea but can no longer stand Twitter-the-actual-product-today. Most of people from group #1 tried it and concluded that yep, it wasn't for them. There is zero surprising about that, and it's where the giant initial numbers came from. But if any of those people stuck around, that's pure bonus. The more interesting question is what's going on with group #2. Certainly lots of them decided there were too many missing features at launch and kept using Twitter mostly. But that is not a "they'll never check back", those people are still in play for any of Twitter to keep or its competitors to win eventually. But the current DAUs wouldn't be where they are if a significant portion of this group hadn't decided to actually stick around. And that's pretty surprising. For years the conventional wisdom has been that you can't actually convert users from one social network to another in the exact same niche. You can cut off growth - like instagram adding stories corresponding to Snapchat's growth plateau - but people stay where their existing networks are. But not this time!
- somethoughts 3y ago
  I think a key strategic weapon that Meta has that no other social media will be able to match is its existing userbase on FB and Insta (i.e. basically all of the 7B+ human population). This can indefinitely be tapped as an audience for Thread content creators and advertisers. Whereas most social media apps have the cold start problem (the stars need to align such that creators and users show up at the exact same time), Zuckerberg has solved it for Meta. Threads doesn't need to be a hit on day 1 or even 100 because it has the existing Meta user base that counted on to consume Thread content (whether they like it or not). For example, I have a FB account but am too lazy/old to sign up for Instagram but I did/do see a lot of Instagram reels that are converted into FB reels - particularly as Instagram reels was starting to take off. I am sure when it is monetizing those views for content creators and advertisers the converted reels get counted. So while the power Instagram/Thread creaters will likely only push/consume the content in the corresponding app, Meta has the unique platform level ability to push the content to users of all 3 apps (i.e. FB/Insta/Threads).
mise_en_place 3y ago
It’s a failure but I think it leads to a better outcome, both for threads and Twitter. Even if it’s #2, that will put pressure on Twitter to improve and vice versa.
yafbum 3y ago
It's dumb to pass this kind of judgement so quickly. Nobody should expect massive habit changes from one day to the next. All that a viral product needs is some foothold to grow from, and by that measure threads still has a fantastic foothold.
csallen 3y ago
It's common startup knowledge at this point that a splashy launch will always lead to subsequent declines in usage, because huge numbers of non-ideal users are attracted by the initial press event. The viral growth you're talking about pretty much never occurs after a huge launch event like this, and is reserved for more methodical releases and/or lower initial starting user counts, e.g. Instagram testing Stories, Facebook growing from college to college.
Dirak 3y ago
Building products and slowly grinding away at improving DAU is Meta's bread and butter. This has been the case with IG Stories vs Snap, now IG Reels vs Tiktok (IG Reels rev set to exceed tiktok as early as 2024 https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/meta2q23/ https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/meta2q23/). Meta is setting up the exact same playbook for Threads, and given their track record, I wouldn't bet against them.
paganel 3y ago
People in here are emotionally invested in seeing Musk fail, no amount of reasoning can make them see the forrest from the trees.
- FullyFunctional 3y ago
  Oh no no, in my reading of the sentiments here they are emotionally invested in seeing the whole xthreads things crash and burn. I’m buying popcorn. For all it’s faults I quite enjoyed pre-musky Twitter, but I completely abandoned the s...show even before the insane rename. I was an early FB user but left that many years ago around the time of the CA scandal. Mastrodon is too quirky and challenging to go mainstream which is why I think it will remain great and I’m loving it there.
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > People in here are emotionally invested in seeing Musk fail, no amount of reasoning can make them see the forrest from the trees. The same statement holds for Mark Zuckerberg. ;-) (EDIT: and perhaps also Steve Huffman)
baby 3y ago
I think one datapoint that people are missing is celebrities on instagram creating threads account and carrying their followers. For example this thread by mr beast: https://www.threads.net/@mrbeast/post/Cucz2pARLyA/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng== https://www.threads.net/@mrbeast/post/Cucz2pARLyA/?igshid=MT... (10k replies and 60k likes)

justapassenger 3y ago

Got it. Unless they had everyone on earth signed up by now, it’s a huge failure.

andrewstuart 3y ago
Facebook had to contain the growth. People were battering down the door for access.
- justapassenger 3y ago
  Can you remind me how they got 100M users in the first week? You seriously compare growth at the planet scale with a growth at few universities?

peter422 3y ago

By this logic Twitter should also be growing, as it’s even better than threads in terms of content. Yet not only is Twitter not growing but it’s shrinking. I think your expectations for success in this vertical are off.

andrewstuart 3y ago
Google says “Twitter has approximately 450 million monthly active users as of 2022”. I’d say that’s probably broadly the number of potential Twitter users. If you think user growth should be exponential to all people in the planet, then that is false.
phpisthebest 3y ago
in my world of twitter/x I see no signs of shrinking...
- monetus 3y ago
  I clicked through from the sibling link to Elon's profile, and only see posts from last April and older? The reach of the site is.. not reaching. It is pulling back.
dahfizz 3y ago
> Yet not only is Twitter not growing but it’s shrinking. Source? Musk just tweeted about a new all-time monthly user record. It's not impossible that he would lie, but my impression is not at all that Twitter is shrinking. There's a whole lot of discussion about Twitter shrinking and high profile people leaving, but they don't. Stephen king comes to mind as a big critic that threatened over and over to leave, but he hasn't. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1684978651857596429 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1684978651857596429
- LordAtlas 3y ago
  You realise he tweeted a line graph without an X-axis?
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Musk just tweeted about a new all-time monthly user record. It's not impossible that he would lie On the rare occasion he makes non-trivial, falsifiable claims, its pretty common that they turn out to be other-than-accurate, yes. > but my impression is not at all that Twitter is shrinking. My impression is that the set of advertisers (not regular Blue users, though they are a different kind of advertiser paying for reach) are narrowing and moving downmarket in a way which would take truly enormous numbers of Blue users to compensate for. Whether its shrinking or not is somewhat beside the point.
  - dahfizz 3y ago
    It wouldn't surprise me if Twitter revenue is down. It also wouldn't surprise me if Twitter revenue is up. Unfortunately, with it being private I don't think we'll ever know. > Whether its shrinking or not is somewhat beside the point. In a thread entirely about Twitter/threads user count, whether it's shrinking is the entire point.
- rpgbr 3y ago
  Half a billion users? Is Elon counting everyone who sees an embed tweet as a user?
- threeseed 3y ago

sanderjd 3y ago

I honestly think this is a very silly take. I don't think any of this is how any of this works. Threads attracted two kinds of people: 1. People coming mostly from instagram / tiktok who had never considered using Twitter because it had an established reputation and they knew it wasn't the kind of product for them, and 2. People switching from Twitter because they love Twitter-the-idea but can no longer stand Twitter-the-actual-product-today. Most of people from group #1 tried it and concluded that yep, it wasn't for them. There is zero surprising about that, and it's where the giant initial numbers came from. But if any of those people stuck around, that's pure bonus. The more interesting question is what's going on with group #2. Certainly lots of them decided there were too many missing features at launch and kept using Twitter mostly. But that is not a "they'll never check back", those people are still in play for any of Twitter to keep or its competitors to win eventually. But the current DAUs wouldn't be where they are if a significant portion of this group hadn't decided to actually stick around. And that's pretty surprising. For years the conventional wisdom has been that you can't actually convert users from one social network to another in the exact same niche. You can cut off growth - like instagram adding stories corresponding to Snapchat's growth plateau - but people stay where their existing networks are. But not this time!

somethoughts 3y ago
I think a key strategic weapon that Meta has that no other social media will be able to match is its existing userbase on FB and Insta (i.e. basically all of the 7B+ human population). This can indefinitely be tapped as an audience for Thread content creators and advertisers. Whereas most social media apps have the cold start problem (the stars need to align such that creators and users show up at the exact same time), Zuckerberg has solved it for Meta. Threads doesn't need to be a hit on day 1 or even 100 because it has the existing Meta user base that counted on to consume Thread content (whether they like it or not). For example, I have a FB account but am too lazy/old to sign up for Instagram but I did/do see a lot of Instagram reels that are converted into FB reels - particularly as Instagram reels was starting to take off. I am sure when it is monetizing those views for content creators and advertisers the converted reels get counted. So while the power Instagram/Thread creaters will likely only push/consume the content in the corresponding app, Meta has the unique platform level ability to push the content to users of all 3 apps (i.e. FB/Insta/Threads).

mise_en_place 3y ago

It’s a failure but I think it leads to a better outcome, both for threads and Twitter. Even if it’s #2, that will put pressure on Twitter to improve and vice versa.

yafbum 3y ago

It's dumb to pass this kind of judgement so quickly. Nobody should expect massive habit changes from one day to the next. All that a viral product needs is some foothold to grow from, and by that measure threads still has a fantastic foothold.

csallen 3y ago

It's common startup knowledge at this point that a splashy launch will always lead to subsequent declines in usage, because huge numbers of non-ideal users are attracted by the initial press event. The viral growth you're talking about pretty much never occurs after a huge launch event like this, and is reserved for more methodical releases and/or lower initial starting user counts, e.g. Instagram testing Stories, Facebook growing from college to college.

Dirak 3y ago

Building products and slowly grinding away at improving DAU is Meta's bread and butter. This has been the case with IG Stories vs Snap, now IG Reels vs Tiktok (IG Reels rev set to exceed tiktok as early as 2024 https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/meta2q23/ https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/meta2q23/). Meta is setting up the exact same playbook for Threads, and given their track record, I wouldn't bet against them.

paganel 3y ago

People in here are emotionally invested in seeing Musk fail, no amount of reasoning can make them see the forrest from the trees.

FullyFunctional 3y ago
Oh no no, in my reading of the sentiments here they are emotionally invested in seeing the whole xthreads things crash and burn. I’m buying popcorn. For all it’s faults I quite enjoyed pre-musky Twitter, but I completely abandoned the s...show even before the insane rename. I was an early FB user but left that many years ago around the time of the CA scandal. Mastrodon is too quirky and challenging to go mainstream which is why I think it will remain great and I’m loving it there.
aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> People in here are emotionally invested in seeing Musk fail, no amount of reasoning can make them see the forrest from the trees. The same statement holds for Mark Zuckerberg. ;-) (EDIT: and perhaps also Steve Huffman)

baby 3y ago

I think one datapoint that people are missing is celebrities on instagram creating threads account and carrying their followers. For example this thread by mr beast: https://www.threads.net/@mrbeast/post/Cucz2pARLyA/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng== https://www.threads.net/@mrbeast/post/Cucz2pARLyA/?igshid=MT... (10k replies and 60k likes)