8 ms·

Threads launches for nearly half a billion more users in Europe

70 points by mindracer 3y ago

kortilla 3y ago
… to pickup 10 thousand users I can’t imagine why people leaving twitter/x would go to threads.
- DarkNova6 3y ago
  What I have seen strikes me to boil down to: "Twitter has become evil because of Musk, save us Zuckerberg!"
- ot1138 3y ago
  Agreed. Twitter used to be terrible and now it's actually gotten pretty good as I appreciate having different viewpoints on a single platform. You do have to block the conspiracy spam but I don't see how that's any different than having to block the fanatically woke posts that used to crowd the conversation.
shawabawa3 3y ago
Quite telling that I'd literally forgotten Thread existed, and I'm in the UK where it has already launched supposedly
- vidarh 3y ago
  Only reason I've recently been reminded is that they're now testing (partial, one-way) federation to Mastodon for some accounts...
- baz00 3y ago
  Has it really launched here? I had no idea. I don't think I've heard anyone even mention it I know.
  - lexandstuff 3y ago
    It's currently the 3rd most popular app in the UK iPhone app store [1], so clearly some people have heard about it. [1] https://apps.apple.com/gb/charts/iphone https://apps.apple.com/gb/charts/iphone
- barkerja 3y ago
  I've been a pretty frequent user since launch. It's really taken off in the past month or so, with news and sports. The NBA has replaced a lot of its court-side Twitter/X branding with Threads. There's also a very strong growing tech and design presence.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    I don't know how much is just wishful thinking, but if there is one thing that it would be very interesting to see is a world where major orgs end up using Threads as a stepping stone out of the walled gardens. I mean, why can't an organization like the NBA establish their own social media presence? Especially if they do end up federating out completely? Why do they need to keep relying on Facebook and playing the game according to Facebook rules, when they could just set up their own server and quickly get their audience in the Fediverse?
    - theonlybutlet 3y ago
      Why not just their own website.
      - rglullis 3y ago
        Do you mean "their own domain"?
        theonlybutlet 3y ago
        I mean own website on their own domain.
      - whycome 3y ago
        In Canada they actually redirect their own website to a third party (sportingNews.com). It's bizarre.
    - netsharc 3y ago
      There's already an NBA App, I imagine they could set up their own social network, but I guess then the headache is, they'd have to manage a social network - which can be a bunch of monkeys at typewriters flinging the vilest things at each other, the topic might not even be basketball. I guess there's a market for shovels* there, a white label social media app/backend, customizable for organizations. Sure there's the fediverse, but companies would rather deal with someone they can call to fix things. *) if you're in a gold rush, don't be another goldminer, sell shovels instead.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  Was DOA for me when I found out I had to grow my audience from scratch there and the algo feed seemingly learnt nothing from my decade+ of IG use, yeah no thanks.
- sgt 3y ago
  I signed up today and I was disappointed to see that every thread in my "stream" had text followed by an image. I thought Thread was going to be text-only? This reminds me too much of Instagram.
- addicted 3y ago
  I returned to it because someone linked to it a few weeks ago. It seemed to be far more vibrant for the communities I follow and had even exceeded Twitter activity in a few. I think it seems to be settling in nicely. Since I started looking at it again they’ve added topics (name?) which should help traction a lot. Ultimately I will probably delete Threads as well because I’m increasingly worried about the downsides of such a public and yet instant mass social network (if nothing else on my own mental wellbeing) but it seems to be doing pretty well.
- hn1986 3y ago
  There's a couple predictions that say Threads will overtake Twitter in active users in the next year or two. Considering that Musk keeps spewing conspiracy theories, antisemitic content and engaging with neo-nazis.
- hn1986 3y ago
  100 million MAU. and nearly the top of the app charts
MSFT_Edging 3y ago
I don't understand who was drawn to the app where brands just talk to eachother in marvel quips. Has anything been happening on threads at all? any culture, inside jokes, etc?
- pityJuke 3y ago
  A concrete mixed bag. I am no longer experiencing brand slop [0]. For following tech news, it's pretty good - the Verge and their journalists in particular seem to live on the app, and I had no issue following the OpenAI debacle on it. I can see the NBA side of Threads is growing, and Woj in particular is apparently moving over his weekly AMAs to Threads. Activity is fairly strong. The viewcounts are lower than Twitter, but I don't trust Twitters' viewcounts at all [2]. Either way, Threads is almost certainly the small fish in Twitter's pond. Threads users still aren't funny, though [1]. But hey, beats being on Twitter. [0]: https://internettalk.substack.com/p/i-am-drowning-in-mutes-please-help https://internettalk.substack.com/p/i-am-drowning-in-mutes-p... [1]: https://www.threads.net/@crumbler/post/C0wyTzMPl6v https://www.threads.net/@crumbler/post/C0wyTzMPl6v [2]: https://sea.mashable.com/tech/26293/no-tucker-carlsons-trump-interview-doesnt-have-230-million-video-views-on-x https://sea.mashable.com/tech/26293/no-tucker-carlsons-trump...
  - catapart 3y ago
    Yeah, it seems like their "slow burn" strategy is seeing dividends in a very deliberate way. I don't know that we'll ever get a "tipping point", and I know that the platform will never be "good", but it definitely seems like it will have its fair share of the social media pie sooner, rather than later. The NBA stuff is interesting because I was thinking that as soon as threads could market itself as valuable to sports (my thought was the NFL), then they would be in a great position to siphon that remaining traffic away from twitter. Feels, to me, like in two years twitter will feel more like 4chan (pretty close now), threads will feel more like a disneyland/facebook/corporate version of dorsey twitter, and mastadon will go on feeling like the yahoo-era tumblr until the next major upset. I'm really hoping that federated solutions come up with something so compelling that everyone just switches over, but I feel like we're past that point with this latest social media shakeup.
miroljub 3y ago
Meta is becoming a new Google. They keep launching and hyping stuff no one needs. Just curious how long it would take for them to retire this. It's sad that FAANG, despite all the money, are not able to develop a single useful product. All they know is to buy and ruin competition.
- dannyw 3y ago
  I wanted to critique your argument on the basis of Oculus Quest and DeepMind, but then I realised both were acquisitions.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  > Meta is becoming a new Google Nah Meta actually ships their AI products.
- nly 3y ago
  Isn't this the destiny of all rich megacorps that have saturated their market?
fernandotakai 3y ago
maybe it's my own bubble, but i literally know zero people that actually use threads. most people i know used the day it was launched then... just stopped using it.
mertbio 3y ago
I might consider using it but still you have to have an Instagram account.
dsr_ 3y ago
[flagged]
- superduperer 3y ago
  [dead]
barkerja 3y ago
A lot of new HN accounts in the comments for this specific post, it appears, coming to bring real thoughtful discussion and meaningful votes.
- pityJuke 3y ago
  I didn't want to call attention to it, but it does appear that this particular topic is charged. While it isn't astroturfing (in the sense that Twitter executives), there does seem to be a lot of impetus to defend Twitter.
- johnwheeler 3y ago
  Was wondering about this. Tons of negativity. I mean, twitter really is shit now.
- hn1986 3y ago
  There are a lot of Musk cult supporters on here..
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
freetonik 3y ago
"launches for nearly half a billion more users" is a weird way to put it. They are not users yet, they are a market, or potential users in other words. If I release an app, I'd feel disingenuous telling that I "launched an app for 7.8 billion users"
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Innervisio 3y ago
Personally, as long as it’s owned my Meta, i just see “Threats” as the name. With this, i mean to data sniffing and privacy concerns. Plus, as much as it seems a good product, how long will it take to be “enshittified”? It seems to me the latest “social medias” have the same formula, launch as a decent app, gather a massive user base, business realise the money potential, the application gets uglier with time as Ads are everywhere and content is generated by bots. One interesting feature is thar they’re trying the ActivityPub protocol, which will allow them to interconnect with Mastodon servers. This is also not all good, as it means they’ll start to sniff data from there. But, at least i can block the threads server entirely preventing this :)
ThalesX 3y ago
The people I know that use Instagram would get the shivers if they had to read 280 characters of text.
captn3m0 3y ago
It’s also starting to test federation over ActivityPub, excited about that mainly. I wish Instagram federated as well, so I could follow friends from there easily.
- politelemon 3y ago
  What does that mean in basic terms, can someone from a mastodon instance see everything in threads.net without a login to threads.net?
  - captn3m0 3y ago
    Yes, people on any Fediverse instance (not necessarily Mastodon) will be able to follow users on threads.net and vice-versa. https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/13/24000120/threads-meta-activitypub-test-mastodon https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/13/24000120/threads-meta-ac...
  - Matumio 3y ago
    If you have a Mastodon account somewhere you will be able to interact/follow. Posts are not just going got flood over, though. Each Mastodon instance has its own local view into the fediverse, and discoverability depends on what other users on your instance have subscribed to. Some instance admins will decide to not host anything Meta, or limit discoverability, as they do with other servers.
hkon 3y ago
No one cares.
hiddencost 3y ago
Bluesky going public early next year. If you're not going to use mastodon, at least go there, not threads.
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
TheCaptain4815 3y ago
Why are people signing up and wanting to receive MORE censorship and advertising? The internet has become a very strange place.
- redserk 3y ago
  Various forms of social media have been a critical part of the internet ever since consumers started getting access to the internet on dialup. People signing up for a service with a sufficiently large userbase isn’t a recent phenomenon.
- weeblewobble 3y ago
  It’s fun and I don’t care about censorship. Also there are no ads (for now)
- hn1986 3y ago
  Musk is censoring NYTimes, Substack and many others. He's not into free-speech https://themarkup.org/investigations/2023/09/15/twitter-is-still-throttling-competitors-links-check-for-yourself https://themarkup.org/investigations/2023/09/15/twitter-is-s...
addicted 3y ago
EU users get the best features. The Use without a profile functionality sounds great.
kyriakos 3y ago
Still says "not available in your country"
rumori 3y ago
After the Instagram subscription debacle, no thanks. There’s no reason to trust Meta with any of your data, they have to sort out their privacy policies first.

70 points by mindracer 3y ago

kortilla 3y ago

… to pickup 10 thousand users I can’t imagine why people leaving twitter/x would go to threads.

DarkNova6 3y ago
What I have seen strikes me to boil down to: "Twitter has become evil because of Musk, save us Zuckerberg!"
ot1138 3y ago
Agreed. Twitter used to be terrible and now it's actually gotten pretty good as I appreciate having different viewpoints on a single platform. You do have to block the conspiracy spam but I don't see how that's any different than having to block the fanatically woke posts that used to crowd the conversation.

shawabawa3 3y ago

Quite telling that I'd literally forgotten Thread existed, and I'm in the UK where it has already launched supposedly

vidarh 3y ago
Only reason I've recently been reminded is that they're now testing (partial, one-way) federation to Mastodon for some accounts...
baz00 3y ago
Has it really launched here? I had no idea. I don't think I've heard anyone even mention it I know.
- lexandstuff 3y ago
  It's currently the 3rd most popular app in the UK iPhone app store [1], so clearly some people have heard about it. [1] https://apps.apple.com/gb/charts/iphone https://apps.apple.com/gb/charts/iphone
barkerja 3y ago
I've been a pretty frequent user since launch. It's really taken off in the past month or so, with news and sports. The NBA has replaced a lot of its court-side Twitter/X branding with Threads. There's also a very strong growing tech and design presence.
- rglullis 3y ago
  I don't know how much is just wishful thinking, but if there is one thing that it would be very interesting to see is a world where major orgs end up using Threads as a stepping stone out of the walled gardens. I mean, why can't an organization like the NBA establish their own social media presence? Especially if they do end up federating out completely? Why do they need to keep relying on Facebook and playing the game according to Facebook rules, when they could just set up their own server and quickly get their audience in the Fediverse?
  - theonlybutlet 3y ago
    Why not just their own website.
    - rglullis 3y ago
      Do you mean "their own domain"?
      - theonlybutlet 3y ago
        I mean own website on their own domain.
    - whycome 3y ago
      In Canada they actually redirect their own website to a third party (sportingNews.com). It's bizarre.
  - netsharc 3y ago
    There's already an NBA App, I imagine they could set up their own social network, but I guess then the headache is, they'd have to manage a social network - which can be a bunch of monkeys at typewriters flinging the vilest things at each other, the topic might not even be basketball. I guess there's a market for shovels* there, a white label social media app/backend, customizable for organizations. Sure there's the fediverse, but companies would rather deal with someone they can call to fix things. *) if you're in a gold rush, don't be another goldminer, sell shovels instead.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
Was DOA for me when I found out I had to grow my audience from scratch there and the algo feed seemingly learnt nothing from my decade+ of IG use, yeah no thanks.
sgt 3y ago
I signed up today and I was disappointed to see that every thread in my "stream" had text followed by an image. I thought Thread was going to be text-only? This reminds me too much of Instagram.
addicted 3y ago
I returned to it because someone linked to it a few weeks ago. It seemed to be far more vibrant for the communities I follow and had even exceeded Twitter activity in a few. I think it seems to be settling in nicely. Since I started looking at it again they’ve added topics (name?) which should help traction a lot. Ultimately I will probably delete Threads as well because I’m increasingly worried about the downsides of such a public and yet instant mass social network (if nothing else on my own mental wellbeing) but it seems to be doing pretty well.
hn1986 3y ago
There's a couple predictions that say Threads will overtake Twitter in active users in the next year or two. Considering that Musk keeps spewing conspiracy theories, antisemitic content and engaging with neo-nazis.
hn1986 3y ago
100 million MAU. and nearly the top of the app charts

MSFT_Edging 3y ago

I don't understand who was drawn to the app where brands just talk to eachother in marvel quips. Has anything been happening on threads at all? any culture, inside jokes, etc?

pityJuke 3y ago
A concrete mixed bag. I am no longer experiencing brand slop [0]. For following tech news, it's pretty good - the Verge and their journalists in particular seem to live on the app, and I had no issue following the OpenAI debacle on it. I can see the NBA side of Threads is growing, and Woj in particular is apparently moving over his weekly AMAs to Threads. Activity is fairly strong. The viewcounts are lower than Twitter, but I don't trust Twitters' viewcounts at all [2]. Either way, Threads is almost certainly the small fish in Twitter's pond. Threads users still aren't funny, though [1]. But hey, beats being on Twitter. [0]: https://internettalk.substack.com/p/i-am-drowning-in-mutes-please-help https://internettalk.substack.com/p/i-am-drowning-in-mutes-p... [1]: https://www.threads.net/@crumbler/post/C0wyTzMPl6v https://www.threads.net/@crumbler/post/C0wyTzMPl6v [2]: https://sea.mashable.com/tech/26293/no-tucker-carlsons-trump-interview-doesnt-have-230-million-video-views-on-x https://sea.mashable.com/tech/26293/no-tucker-carlsons-trump...
- catapart 3y ago
  Yeah, it seems like their "slow burn" strategy is seeing dividends in a very deliberate way. I don't know that we'll ever get a "tipping point", and I know that the platform will never be "good", but it definitely seems like it will have its fair share of the social media pie sooner, rather than later. The NBA stuff is interesting because I was thinking that as soon as threads could market itself as valuable to sports (my thought was the NFL), then they would be in a great position to siphon that remaining traffic away from twitter. Feels, to me, like in two years twitter will feel more like 4chan (pretty close now), threads will feel more like a disneyland/facebook/corporate version of dorsey twitter, and mastadon will go on feeling like the yahoo-era tumblr until the next major upset. I'm really hoping that federated solutions come up with something so compelling that everyone just switches over, but I feel like we're past that point with this latest social media shakeup.

miroljub 3y ago

Meta is becoming a new Google. They keep launching and hyping stuff no one needs. Just curious how long it would take for them to retire this. It's sad that FAANG, despite all the money, are not able to develop a single useful product. All they know is to buy and ruin competition.

dannyw 3y ago
I wanted to critique your argument on the basis of Oculus Quest and DeepMind, but then I realised both were acquisitions.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
> Meta is becoming a new Google Nah Meta actually ships their AI products.
nly 3y ago
Isn't this the destiny of all rich megacorps that have saturated their market?

fernandotakai 3y ago

maybe it's my own bubble, but i literally know zero people that actually use threads. most people i know used the day it was launched then... just stopped using it.

mertbio 3y ago

I might consider using it but still you have to have an Instagram account.

dsr_ 3y ago

[flagged]

superduperer 3y ago
[dead]

barkerja 3y ago

A lot of new HN accounts in the comments for this specific post, it appears, coming to bring real thoughtful discussion and meaningful votes.

pityJuke 3y ago
I didn't want to call attention to it, but it does appear that this particular topic is charged. While it isn't astroturfing (in the sense that Twitter executives), there does seem to be a lot of impetus to defend Twitter.
johnwheeler 3y ago
Was wondering about this. Tons of negativity. I mean, twitter really is shit now.
hn1986 3y ago
There are a lot of Musk cult supporters on here..

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

freetonik 3y ago

"launches for nearly half a billion more users" is a weird way to put it. They are not users yet, they are a market, or potential users in other words. If I release an app, I'd feel disingenuous telling that I "launched an app for 7.8 billion users"

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Innervisio 3y ago

Personally, as long as it’s owned my Meta, i just see “Threats” as the name. With this, i mean to data sniffing and privacy concerns. Plus, as much as it seems a good product, how long will it take to be “enshittified”? It seems to me the latest “social medias” have the same formula, launch as a decent app, gather a massive user base, business realise the money potential, the application gets uglier with time as Ads are everywhere and content is generated by bots. One interesting feature is thar they’re trying the ActivityPub protocol, which will allow them to interconnect with Mastodon servers. This is also not all good, as it means they’ll start to sniff data from there. But, at least i can block the threads server entirely preventing this :)

ThalesX 3y ago

The people I know that use Instagram would get the shivers if they had to read 280 characters of text.

captn3m0 3y ago

It’s also starting to test federation over ActivityPub, excited about that mainly. I wish Instagram federated as well, so I could follow friends from there easily.

politelemon 3y ago
What does that mean in basic terms, can someone from a mastodon instance see everything in threads.net without a login to threads.net?
- captn3m0 3y ago
  Yes, people on any Fediverse instance (not necessarily Mastodon) will be able to follow users on threads.net and vice-versa. https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/13/24000120/threads-meta-activitypub-test-mastodon https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/13/24000120/threads-meta-ac...
- Matumio 3y ago
  If you have a Mastodon account somewhere you will be able to interact/follow. Posts are not just going got flood over, though. Each Mastodon instance has its own local view into the fediverse, and discoverability depends on what other users on your instance have subscribed to. Some instance admins will decide to not host anything Meta, or limit discoverability, as they do with other servers.

hkon 3y ago

No one cares.

hiddencost 3y ago

Bluesky going public early next year. If you're not going to use mastodon, at least go there, not threads.

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]

TheCaptain4815 3y ago

Why are people signing up and wanting to receive MORE censorship and advertising? The internet has become a very strange place.

redserk 3y ago
Various forms of social media have been a critical part of the internet ever since consumers started getting access to the internet on dialup. People signing up for a service with a sufficiently large userbase isn’t a recent phenomenon.
weeblewobble 3y ago
It’s fun and I don’t care about censorship. Also there are no ads (for now)
hn1986 3y ago
Musk is censoring NYTimes, Substack and many others. He's not into free-speech https://themarkup.org/investigations/2023/09/15/twitter-is-still-throttling-competitors-links-check-for-yourself https://themarkup.org/investigations/2023/09/15/twitter-is-s...

addicted 3y ago

EU users get the best features. The Use without a profile functionality sounds great.

kyriakos 3y ago

Still says "not available in your country"

rumori 3y ago

After the Instagram subscription debacle, no thanks. There’s no reason to trust Meta with any of your data, they have to sort out their privacy policies first.