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Maybe in June that was true, once Threads came out and got way more users and became a thing people think of as Twitter 2.0 I’d argue their position became much

Maybe in June that was true, once Threads came out and got way more users and became a thing people think of as Twitter 2.0 I’d argue their position became much less secure. Nobody is waiting when Threads already exists.

andersa 3y ago
I'd argue nobody is waiting at all. A tiny fraction of users split off to tiny communities on Mastodon with next to no traffic (probably exact what they wanted, to be fair), Threads would be dying if it wasn't propped up by Instagram, and everyone else remained happily on Twitter. Or do we have a good reason to believe the active user counts posted by Elon and others are fake?
- dathinab 3y ago
  not fakes (through I don't trust Musk to be non-deceptive) but there is a huge difference between "active user who wants to use it" and "active user who wants to not use it but due to network effects can't" It's kinda a similar situation like with Facebook (and just Facebook, not Meta in general). - they have some loyal groups (e.g. Facebook people broadly around 60 and older) - they lost any interest (and much goodwill) from many other groups - but due the various network effects many of the "lost interest" people still have it and might still count as active users depending on definition of active (but in practice they are passive not active users, unwilling to spend money on it, unwilling to give it any information about themself and not necessary the best ad targets either as there is a risk of you company being associated with "that annoying thing they would which to just discard". Just with the difference that with Twitter most of the "passive" users are still active because they haven't found an alternative to be active on YET
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
Yeah but isn't threads basically dead now? I think the core issue is that despite how stupid and shitty it's become and seems intent on continuing to become, Twitter is still Twitter and Twitter users don't want BlueSky or Threads, they want Twitter which is still Twitter despite Elon and co's best efforts. Also the ability for users to fact-check ads is still hilarious and entertaining which almost offsets the amount of ads.
- hn1986 3y ago
  I'd argue Twitter is dying - DAU is dropping from its peak due to it's increasingly toxic environment and CEO who pushes conspiracy theories and extreme viewpoints and crucially, advertisers are leaving Twitter
  - dathinab 3y ago
    I agree it seems to be dying monetary wise, the way Musk bought it put too much of a profit burden on a company which already had issues with profitability. It also seem to be dying user wise outside of some communities, but I think it's will be like the death of Facebook. Slow, and due to network effects never complete. Through it has much less network effects then Facebook had (no family main communication, old now distant friend main communication etc.).
dathinab 3y ago
idk. at least in my cycle no one uses Threads or cares about it, including the people I referred to which hope for a Twitter 2.0 somewhere it doesn't help that Threads through their action already kinda made it clear that their compatibility with mastodon and co. falls in the "embrace extend extinguish" category and just by the fact that Threads is from Meta it can't be Twitter 2.0, to many people refuse to use meta products of any kind as much as possible as they fundamentally do not trust Meta at all
numpad0 3y ago
I don't use Facebook nor Threads so maybe I'm mistaken, but isn't Facebook Wall equivalent to Twitter timeline in the first place?
benreesman 3y ago
I submit it’s under-noted: many people want very different venues for generating an audience than for consuming information/content, a phenomena that’s gone some kind of parabolic since there started being serious money in being an influencer. You see this in the way high-ish follower count folks are constantly pruning their follows to signal some kind of ratio. I guess that signal produces some outcome. HN’s staying power as just about the best forum of remotely general interest might have a lot to do with there not being followers (along with a crack team of elite mods and other things). You can rack up karma but it’s a side quest, join date matters a bit on a boundary condition, but mostly there’s not really any raw fame factor outside a few hyper-famous folks. I wonder if there’s any scalability past HN size on that.

andersa 3y ago

I'd argue nobody is waiting at all. A tiny fraction of users split off to tiny communities on Mastodon with next to no traffic (probably exact what they wanted, to be fair), Threads would be dying if it wasn't propped up by Instagram, and everyone else remained happily on Twitter. Or do we have a good reason to believe the active user counts posted by Elon and others are fake?

dathinab 3y ago
not fakes (through I don't trust Musk to be non-deceptive) but there is a huge difference between "active user who wants to use it" and "active user who wants to not use it but due to network effects can't" It's kinda a similar situation like with Facebook (and just Facebook, not Meta in general). - they have some loyal groups (e.g. Facebook people broadly around 60 and older) - they lost any interest (and much goodwill) from many other groups - but due the various network effects many of the "lost interest" people still have it and might still count as active users depending on definition of active (but in practice they are passive not active users, unwilling to spend money on it, unwilling to give it any information about themself and not necessary the best ad targets either as there is a risk of you company being associated with "that annoying thing they would which to just discard". Just with the difference that with Twitter most of the "passive" users are still active because they haven't found an alternative to be active on YET

ToucanLoucan 3y ago

Yeah but isn't threads basically dead now? I think the core issue is that despite how stupid and shitty it's become and seems intent on continuing to become, Twitter is still Twitter and Twitter users don't want BlueSky or Threads, they want Twitter which is still Twitter despite Elon and co's best efforts. Also the ability for users to fact-check ads is still hilarious and entertaining which almost offsets the amount of ads.

hn1986 3y ago
I'd argue Twitter is dying - DAU is dropping from its peak due to it's increasingly toxic environment and CEO who pushes conspiracy theories and extreme viewpoints and crucially, advertisers are leaving Twitter
- dathinab 3y ago
  I agree it seems to be dying monetary wise, the way Musk bought it put too much of a profit burden on a company which already had issues with profitability. It also seem to be dying user wise outside of some communities, but I think it's will be like the death of Facebook. Slow, and due to network effects never complete. Through it has much less network effects then Facebook had (no family main communication, old now distant friend main communication etc.).

dathinab 3y ago

idk. at least in my cycle no one uses Threads or cares about it, including the people I referred to which hope for a Twitter 2.0 somewhere it doesn't help that Threads through their action already kinda made it clear that their compatibility with mastodon and co. falls in the "embrace extend extinguish" category and just by the fact that Threads is from Meta it can't be Twitter 2.0, to many people refuse to use meta products of any kind as much as possible as they fundamentally do not trust Meta at all

numpad0 3y ago

I don't use Facebook nor Threads so maybe I'm mistaken, but isn't Facebook Wall equivalent to Twitter timeline in the first place?

benreesman 3y ago

I submit it’s under-noted: many people want very different venues for generating an audience than for consuming information/content, a phenomena that’s gone some kind of parabolic since there started being serious money in being an influencer. You see this in the way high-ish follower count folks are constantly pruning their follows to signal some kind of ratio. I guess that signal produces some outcome. HN’s staying power as just about the best forum of remotely general interest might have a lot to do with there not being followers (along with a crack team of elite mods and other things). You can rack up karma but it’s a side quest, join date matters a bit on a boundary condition, but mostly there’s not really any raw fame factor outside a few hyper-famous folks. I wonder if there’s any scalability past HN size on that.