8 ms·

Instagram Threads triples downloads in December, reaching top; X falls to #36

84 points by hn1986 3y ago

kbar13 3y ago
i am way more curious about threads than any of the other social media networks simply because i use ig quite a bit and they do a good job of surfacing threads posts in your ig feed
- wyclif 3y ago
  Threads is Facebook. To me, the more interesting one to watch is Bluesky.
  - rvz 3y ago
    Exactly. It is still Facebook (again). The controversies and problems that once happened on Facebook, Instagram, etc will happen on Threads. Bluesky is more of a better solution in the long run.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Yeah this is why Threads will win. They have unlimited shots on goal due to being able to nudge users from IG over to threads literally billions of times per day. It can be bad one week, or month, or year, and they’ll still eventually get most IG users onto it. It doesn’t suffer from the “eh nothing for me here, I’m never coming back” problem that most other new networks do.
ravenstine 3y ago
Elron has proven that there really is such a thing as bad publicity. The changes made to the platform don't explain all aspects of its decline.
- grepexdev 3y ago
  Your typo confused me as u recently started reading LOTR and I thought you were making some reference to Elrond lol
ncphillips 3y ago
Google+ also had enormous early growth, but I don’t know anyone who used it beyond a test run. So far it’s been the same with Threads in my circle. Does downloads really tell us much or is it just a vanity metric?
- MattGaiser 3y ago
  In my social sphere, most just used it as a test run, but then Twitter became a centre of rage, violence, and politics that the more apolitical ones are spending more time on Threads.
  - samtheprogram 3y ago
    In my experience it’s not quite the opposite but quite different. Twitter is fine for apolitical people. They don’t follow the politics. And then Twitter is fine for people of a certain political leaning. Everything else in this space is for people who are political + left enough to want to leave Twitter because they follow enough political things to be annoyed at all.
- rvz 3y ago
  > Does downloads really tell us much or is it just a vanity metric? It doesn't. Which is why they won't reveal the new daily active users (DAUs) on Threads which is one of the most important metrics on user usage and tells us if they are still sticking to using the platform. The last time I checked it was less than 25M DAUs. Not even the author is using their Threads account in the article as a contact and is still posting more on X than Threads.
- brightball 3y ago
  Agreed. My foray into threads was pretty much just rage bait.
- tracerbulletx 3y ago
  The difference is this is tightly coupled with Instagram which is one of the most active networks already and they can easily cross pollinate the two for a long time and keep sucking up people who get fed up with Twitter.
david422 3y ago
Still not gonna download it.
HeavenFox 3y ago
I wonder why they didn’t integrate directly into Instagram main app. They did it for short video, why not text? I’m not advocating this from a customer perspective; it just sounds like a good idea if they want to fully crush Elon’s Twitter
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mingus88 3y ago
  The whole point of Threads seemed to be the flex that they could blitzkrieg their app to market at the precise moment that Musk was floundering with the service and shedding users Even Bluesky with a ex-Twitter folk and have been seemingly developing a competing platform couldn’t execute like that. Mastadon was in no position to capitalize like that. So the choice to not integrate it into IG makes sense to me. All you have to do is be there, and timing is everything.
- monetus 3y ago
  I wouldn't have downloaded it, as I didn't want an Instagram but wanted a threads account. I think they wanted clean branding to draw in new users, not converted from Instagram.
- PKop 3y ago
  This would be a bad idea to pull Twitter users who don't like or use Instagram. You're unnecessarily combining to disparate social apps.
  - spullara 3y ago
    They did this by bringing the IG network to Threads. Social networks are the networks not the features.
    - PKop 3y ago
      Disagree. The type of people that like Instagram won't just arbitrarily start using threads which appeals to different audience. In that sense we will see if demand for a new twitter can just be created out of the user-base of Instagram. I have my doubts.
strangattractor 3y ago
Musk to staff: "Work harder! Forget that I keep saying things that kill traffic to the site."
thedaly 3y ago
Who is downloading threads? Haven't read or heard any talk on it in months. To be fair, I am far removed from the meta ecosystem.
- monetus 3y ago
  The most obvious answer is people who can't stand Tucker Carlson or Alex Jones types. Lots of high profile political accounts have moved over from X. In the politics vein, lots of Ukrainian and Ukraine watchers as well, oddly enough. Aside from that, some machine learning accounts are pretty decent and have a growing community. - my 2¢
  - thedaly 3y ago
    This may be a dumb question, but wouldn't one only see that content if they engage with it or follow people who engage with it?
    - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
      An algorithmic feed of posts and replies within a post means that you see whatever an optimization function thinks will maximize revenue and engagement. And people on both sides fall for the bait and engage when they're shown what they disagree with.
    - PKop 3y ago
      Yes, you can absolutely curate your feed by following what you want to see more of, marking suggested tweets you don't like as see less often, block people etc. This is a non-issue.
    - drusepth 3y ago
      You would think so, but it sure feels like all of the ad slots in my feed are almost always inundated with promoted posts from random rage-baiters on the right. I even muted "Trump" and a bunch of other politics-talk and still see it daily through ads. Add to the fact that X is also trialing ads that don't get labeled as ads [1] (and just get promoted to your stream as if they're a normal post, but still have the "Why am I seeing this ad?" etc context menu), and it seems like there's more and more avenues every day for content to creep into your feed whether you interact with it or not. [1] https://adguard.com/en/blog/twitter-x-ads-unlabelled-musk.html https://adguard.com/en/blog/twitter-x-ads-unlabelled-musk.ht...
phanindra_veera 3y ago
Well, almost every Techcrunch article is negative towards anything related to Musk. So ignore. Might be fake too.
- lebean 3y ago
  [dead]
gcau 3y ago
Nobody I know/see in my social circles has ever linked to threads or really ever talked about it, in contrast everyone is linking tweets fairly often and X/twitter gets mentioned often. Just my observation.
- thedaly 3y ago
  Yeah, now that I think about it, I never see any screenshots on reddit either. I see tons from twitter.
cmelbye 3y ago
They opened up access to EU users in December[0] and presumably started running install banners inside Instagram in that region alongside the launch. How much of the growth is from EU vs. rest of world? [0]: https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/threads-instagram-text-feature https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/threads-insta...
fortran77 3y ago
I have accounts on all of the X competitors, from Bluesky to Threads. I'd love there to be exciting communities there! And yet I still come back to X. Execpt for some niche communities that have settled in them, they seem like ghosttowns.
jiehong 3y ago
Never used Thread, so here is a stupid question: Is it easier for non users to read things on thread compared to X and the need for the dying nitters?
- monetus 3y ago
  Yes, if it is posted there, as threads doesn't hide anything from you. X still hides new posts on profiles, and all replies to a post you are linked to. Nitter is crippled most of the time sadly, yeah.
lexandstuff 3y ago
I really love Threads personally. I find it more chilled than Twitter but not as boring as Mastodon. The engagement I get is much, much higher than what I get on Twitter and the vibe seems friendlier. My major complaint is none of the AI community are on it, aside from Meta researchers.
- bamboozled 3y ago
  For now
mullingitover 3y ago
Data point: I've been using threads since day one and deleted Twitter in day 2. Once every couple weeks or so I'll check out Twitter, but I've been on threads daily and haven't felt like I was missing anything. Twitter isn't dead, but the core user group has obviously plateaued.
monetus 3y ago
Twitter isn't focused on being a microblogging platform anymore, and X has a branding problem worse than that papa John's guy, John Schnatter. I like mastodon, but it has been described as going to a quiet restaurant only to be handed a meat cleaver and an oven. Bluesky's interface is clunky, slow by comparison. It is run by Jack Dorsey who, bless his good intentions, doesn't inspire faith in his management of a good product. Meta is hands off, this is Instagram and Mosseri's discretion, with Meta as a hiring pool. The hate for meta is palpable, but threads is only going to grow imo.
- benzible 3y ago
  Agree with a lot of this but Dorsey doesn't run Bluesky. The project was initiated at Twitter while he was CEO and he's on the board of the company, but he's not the day to day operator.
  - slimsag 3y ago
    Which I would also suggest is the most questionable/concerning part of Bluesky: Twitter didn't invest in it in exchange for nothing. What amount of control might X/Elon have over Bluesky as a company? Jack backing something other than Bluesky post-Twitter is not a good sign.
- TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
  My understanding is that Jack Dorsey has little to no direct involvement with Blue Sky anymore. He doesn't even have an account on the service. As far as I know, Jack has redirected his efforts to Nostr. I do think one useful heuristic for evaluating social media apps is whether company leadership and employees are actually participating on the platform. When I open Twitter and Threads, I see Elon and Mark both posting regularly.
- bogomipz 3y ago
  >"Twitter isn't focused on being a microblogging platform anymore, and X has a branding problem worse than that papa John's guy, John Schnatter." It is amusing that accessing "X formerly known as Twitter" by typing "x.com" in a browser still resolves to twitter.com. Is there a reason that a CEO who is unbothered by abrupt and radical changes can't or won't retire the twitter.com domain? Is there a practical reason for this? Certainly "tiwtter.com" being hardcoded everywhere would not rise to the level of an intractable problem.
waprin 3y ago
I think if we were to see an X killer I’d much sooner predict Substack does it. I was sleeping on Substack a bit but it has many of the positive qualities of Twitter with many of the downsides removed: * Notes are a short form platform but Substack itself is more long form centric. A huge problem of Twitter was excessive short form creates emphasis on snappy talking points over substance, but Substack more naturally lets you make your talking point but expound on it long form * More creator-friendly letting you export your email list and leave the platform * But has many the social media network strengths such as likes, retweets, recommends, etc * Focused on strong writers as early users which lends itself more naturally to short form writing than the pictures of Instagram * Doesn’t have the Facebook stigma that Threads has Substack just feels like it has so many of the advantages of what Twitter offers while also being a new , unique thing. Threads feels more like Twitter, but by Zuckerberg, and the IG crowd seem less like natural writers than the journalists on Substack I initially rolled my eyes at Substack being this big YC company around email lists, but I did admire some of their writers and since I’ve checked out their platform I’ve been extremely impressed. It of course doesn’t have the same cultural cachet as Twitter but it also has none of the Taylor Swift deepfakes or bot armies. So a lot of headwinds. If I could bet on Threads, X, or Substack I’d wager on the Stack.
- boplicity 3y ago
  Substack has loads of real businesses 100% dependent on the platform, which is an incredible asset for the network as a whole. These are run by people that are going to fight hard to make Substack a valuable service. This is something that Twitter never quite figured out, though Facebook has to a certain extent with Pages.
- benzible 3y ago
  Substack has plenty of stigma [1], esp. among the type of people who left Twitter because they don't appreciate Elon's right wing extremism, including endorsement of actual Nazis [2] [1] https://cybernews.com/news/platformer-leaves-substack/ https://cybernews.com/news/platformer-leaves-substack/ [2] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-antisemitic-conspiracy-theory-tweet_n_65562923e4b0e476701328b4 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-antisemitic-conspir...
anshulbhide 3y ago
I literally don't know anyone who uses Threads.
- mliker 3y ago
  I literally don't know anyone who watches cricket, and yet it's a world famous sport beloved by many many people. Case in point, it's erroneous to judge an app by your local network.
  - deadbabe 3y ago
    Perhaps his network is a robust sampling of people from all walks of life, and still he doesn’t know anyone that uses Threads.
badwolf 3y ago
It seems it's once again time for the HN elite to declare Threads dead because they personally don't use it or know anyone in their amazing inner circle who uses it. This will surely be the year of the Linux desktop!
- EGreg 3y ago
  I don’t know anyone who uses Web3. It’s just a useless technology searching for a solution. All that growth in adoption is fake, I am sure of it. Threads is as bad as Web3. Clearly no one wants it. Just wait…
  - misiti3780 3y ago
    Chris Dixon is still pumping it!
misiti3780 3y ago
I do not know anyone that uses threads, and 1/2 the people in this thread are talking it up because they hate everything about Elon Musk. We wont be using/talking about threads in 2 years. If you disagree, lets bet.
Phil_Latio 3y ago
We need a HN exclusive Musk Bingo game.
xeckr 3y ago
I find X unusable with all the gore and shock content that makes its way into my feed.
- willsmith72 3y ago
  For me it's 2008 Facebook junk memes. Idk what that says about my watch stats, I swear I hate them
developersdevel 3y ago
I feel like this is like comparing a teenager’s YoY % growth and a newborn’s. Of course the newborn is going to have monstrous growth.
TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
Threads will probably only keep getting worse with time. Over the past year I've noticed a massive increase in ads on Instagram... Right now Threads is basically ad-free, but that won't last forever. I know maybe one of two people that sometimes post on Thread, but it doesn't particularly feel like there's a strong sense of community. I think the era of public social media has kinda come to an end, and most interesting conversations have moved to private group chats and community Discord servers. The only people I've seen participating regularly on Threads are people with massive followings, and even most of those barely seem to get any meaningful engagement. Right now I just use Twitter to follow artists and a few tech personalities. But for most posters past a certain number of followers opening their replies is just utterly pointless. It's full of memes and irrelevant replies trying to farm views or engagement by leeching off the OP.
scrame 3y ago
I'm guessing this is a mandatory app install on a new phone.
pentagrama 3y ago
Yeah, I never signed up to Threads and on my Instagram feed the other day I saw a message saying "Sabrina sent you a message on Threads" with a picture of a girl in bikini that I never see. I tap on that and a modal dialog pops up saying "Sign Up to Threads to read the message".
uptownfunk 3y ago
Thank goodness for X. Frankly it may make sense to convert it into a non profit in the interim and then for profitize it once it can be run properly. If it were not for X then there is very little hope for American democracy.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deadbabe 3y ago
If Threads can manage to stick around for a few years I think it’s bound to pick up. Its catalyst might not be the current generations, it could be angling for Gen Alpha eventually.
uptownfunk 3y ago
Huge X reader, actually used it more since Elon took it over and even more after reading the bio. One of the best things to come out for American democracy. Very clear he is being targeted especially after the ridiculous Delaware ruling.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  The ridiculous Delaware ruling being the one where they found “if you sign a contract you are legally bound to its terms?” Quite an exotic and ridiculous ruling lol
arctac 3y ago
Trading one overlord over another is never a wise choice.
hojinkoh 3y ago
After the presidential election in Taiwan earlier this month, many important political figures (current president, next president, opposition leaders, A LOT OF parliament members...) suddenly got on Threads and started posting there actively. Their followers naturally also followed them there. As for the reason... I still don't understand why lol
hn1986 3y ago
Really curious why this post got flagged? Unfortunately, it's typical on here for any competitor to Musk's companies. I hope @dang realizes this is a problem.

84 points by hn1986 3y ago

i am way more curious about threads than any of the other social media networks simply because i use ig quite a bit and they do a good job of surfacing threads posts in your ig feed

wyclif 3y ago
Threads is Facebook. To me, the more interesting one to watch is Bluesky.
- rvz 3y ago
  Exactly. It is still Facebook (again). The controversies and problems that once happened on Facebook, Instagram, etc will happen on Threads. Bluesky is more of a better solution in the long run.
ethanbond 3y ago
Yeah this is why Threads will win. They have unlimited shots on goal due to being able to nudge users from IG over to threads literally billions of times per day. It can be bad one week, or month, or year, and they’ll still eventually get most IG users onto it. It doesn’t suffer from the “eh nothing for me here, I’m never coming back” problem that most other new networks do.

ravenstine 3y ago

Elron has proven that there really is such a thing as bad publicity. The changes made to the platform don't explain all aspects of its decline.

grepexdev 3y ago
Your typo confused me as u recently started reading LOTR and I thought you were making some reference to Elrond lol

ncphillips 3y ago

Google+ also had enormous early growth, but I don’t know anyone who used it beyond a test run. So far it’s been the same with Threads in my circle. Does downloads really tell us much or is it just a vanity metric?

MattGaiser 3y ago
In my social sphere, most just used it as a test run, but then Twitter became a centre of rage, violence, and politics that the more apolitical ones are spending more time on Threads.
- samtheprogram 3y ago
  In my experience it’s not quite the opposite but quite different. Twitter is fine for apolitical people. They don’t follow the politics. And then Twitter is fine for people of a certain political leaning. Everything else in this space is for people who are political + left enough to want to leave Twitter because they follow enough political things to be annoyed at all.
rvz 3y ago
> Does downloads really tell us much or is it just a vanity metric? It doesn't. Which is why they won't reveal the new daily active users (DAUs) on Threads which is one of the most important metrics on user usage and tells us if they are still sticking to using the platform. The last time I checked it was less than 25M DAUs. Not even the author is using their Threads account in the article as a contact and is still posting more on X than Threads.
brightball 3y ago
Agreed. My foray into threads was pretty much just rage bait.
tracerbulletx 3y ago
The difference is this is tightly coupled with Instagram which is one of the most active networks already and they can easily cross pollinate the two for a long time and keep sucking up people who get fed up with Twitter.

david422 3y ago

Still not gonna download it.

HeavenFox 3y ago

I wonder why they didn’t integrate directly into Instagram main app. They did it for short video, why not text? I’m not advocating this from a customer perspective; it just sounds like a good idea if they want to fully crush Elon’s Twitter

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mingus88 3y ago
The whole point of Threads seemed to be the flex that they could blitzkrieg their app to market at the precise moment that Musk was floundering with the service and shedding users Even Bluesky with a ex-Twitter folk and have been seemingly developing a competing platform couldn’t execute like that. Mastadon was in no position to capitalize like that. So the choice to not integrate it into IG makes sense to me. All you have to do is be there, and timing is everything.
monetus 3y ago
I wouldn't have downloaded it, as I didn't want an Instagram but wanted a threads account. I think they wanted clean branding to draw in new users, not converted from Instagram.
PKop 3y ago
This would be a bad idea to pull Twitter users who don't like or use Instagram. You're unnecessarily combining to disparate social apps.
- spullara 3y ago
  They did this by bringing the IG network to Threads. Social networks are the networks not the features.
  - PKop 3y ago
    Disagree. The type of people that like Instagram won't just arbitrarily start using threads which appeals to different audience. In that sense we will see if demand for a new twitter can just be created out of the user-base of Instagram. I have my doubts.

strangattractor 3y ago

Musk to staff: "Work harder! Forget that I keep saying things that kill traffic to the site."

thedaly 3y ago

Who is downloading threads? Haven't read or heard any talk on it in months. To be fair, I am far removed from the meta ecosystem.

monetus 3y ago
The most obvious answer is people who can't stand Tucker Carlson or Alex Jones types. Lots of high profile political accounts have moved over from X. In the politics vein, lots of Ukrainian and Ukraine watchers as well, oddly enough. Aside from that, some machine learning accounts are pretty decent and have a growing community. - my 2¢
- thedaly 3y ago
  This may be a dumb question, but wouldn't one only see that content if they engage with it or follow people who engage with it?
  - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
    An algorithmic feed of posts and replies within a post means that you see whatever an optimization function thinks will maximize revenue and engagement. And people on both sides fall for the bait and engage when they're shown what they disagree with.
  - PKop 3y ago
    Yes, you can absolutely curate your feed by following what you want to see more of, marking suggested tweets you don't like as see less often, block people etc. This is a non-issue.
  - drusepth 3y ago
    You would think so, but it sure feels like all of the ad slots in my feed are almost always inundated with promoted posts from random rage-baiters on the right. I even muted "Trump" and a bunch of other politics-talk and still see it daily through ads. Add to the fact that X is also trialing ads that don't get labeled as ads [1] (and just get promoted to your stream as if they're a normal post, but still have the "Why am I seeing this ad?" etc context menu), and it seems like there's more and more avenues every day for content to creep into your feed whether you interact with it or not. [1] https://adguard.com/en/blog/twitter-x-ads-unlabelled-musk.html https://adguard.com/en/blog/twitter-x-ads-unlabelled-musk.ht...

phanindra_veera 3y ago

Well, almost every Techcrunch article is negative towards anything related to Musk. So ignore. Might be fake too.

lebean 3y ago
[dead]

gcau 3y ago

Nobody I know/see in my social circles has ever linked to threads or really ever talked about it, in contrast everyone is linking tweets fairly often and X/twitter gets mentioned often. Just my observation.

thedaly 3y ago
Yeah, now that I think about it, I never see any screenshots on reddit either. I see tons from twitter.

cmelbye 3y ago

They opened up access to EU users in December[0] and presumably started running install banners inside Instagram in that region alongside the launch. How much of the growth is from EU vs. rest of world? [0]: https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/threads-instagram-text-feature https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/threads-insta...

fortran77 3y ago

I have accounts on all of the X competitors, from Bluesky to Threads. I'd love there to be exciting communities there! And yet I still come back to X. Execpt for some niche communities that have settled in them, they seem like ghosttowns.

jiehong 3y ago

Never used Thread, so here is a stupid question: Is it easier for non users to read things on thread compared to X and the need for the dying nitters?

monetus 3y ago
Yes, if it is posted there, as threads doesn't hide anything from you. X still hides new posts on profiles, and all replies to a post you are linked to. Nitter is crippled most of the time sadly, yeah.

lexandstuff 3y ago

I really love Threads personally. I find it more chilled than Twitter but not as boring as Mastodon. The engagement I get is much, much higher than what I get on Twitter and the vibe seems friendlier. My major complaint is none of the AI community are on it, aside from Meta researchers.

bamboozled 3y ago
For now

mullingitover 3y ago

Data point: I've been using threads since day one and deleted Twitter in day 2. Once every couple weeks or so I'll check out Twitter, but I've been on threads daily and haven't felt like I was missing anything. Twitter isn't dead, but the core user group has obviously plateaued.

monetus 3y ago

Twitter isn't focused on being a microblogging platform anymore, and X has a branding problem worse than that papa John's guy, John Schnatter. I like mastodon, but it has been described as going to a quiet restaurant only to be handed a meat cleaver and an oven. Bluesky's interface is clunky, slow by comparison. It is run by Jack Dorsey who, bless his good intentions, doesn't inspire faith in his management of a good product. Meta is hands off, this is Instagram and Mosseri's discretion, with Meta as a hiring pool. The hate for meta is palpable, but threads is only going to grow imo.

benzible 3y ago
Agree with a lot of this but Dorsey doesn't run Bluesky. The project was initiated at Twitter while he was CEO and he's on the board of the company, but he's not the day to day operator.
- slimsag 3y ago
  Which I would also suggest is the most questionable/concerning part of Bluesky: Twitter didn't invest in it in exchange for nothing. What amount of control might X/Elon have over Bluesky as a company? Jack backing something other than Bluesky post-Twitter is not a good sign.
TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
My understanding is that Jack Dorsey has little to no direct involvement with Blue Sky anymore. He doesn't even have an account on the service. As far as I know, Jack has redirected his efforts to Nostr. I do think one useful heuristic for evaluating social media apps is whether company leadership and employees are actually participating on the platform. When I open Twitter and Threads, I see Elon and Mark both posting regularly.
bogomipz 3y ago
>"Twitter isn't focused on being a microblogging platform anymore, and X has a branding problem worse than that papa John's guy, John Schnatter." It is amusing that accessing "X formerly known as Twitter" by typing "x.com" in a browser still resolves to twitter.com. Is there a reason that a CEO who is unbothered by abrupt and radical changes can't or won't retire the twitter.com domain? Is there a practical reason for this? Certainly "tiwtter.com" being hardcoded everywhere would not rise to the level of an intractable problem.

waprin 3y ago

I think if we were to see an X killer I’d much sooner predict Substack does it. I was sleeping on Substack a bit but it has many of the positive qualities of Twitter with many of the downsides removed: * Notes are a short form platform but Substack itself is more long form centric. A huge problem of Twitter was excessive short form creates emphasis on snappy talking points over substance, but Substack more naturally lets you make your talking point but expound on it long form * More creator-friendly letting you export your email list and leave the platform * But has many the social media network strengths such as likes, retweets, recommends, etc * Focused on strong writers as early users which lends itself more naturally to short form writing than the pictures of Instagram * Doesn’t have the Facebook stigma that Threads has Substack just feels like it has so many of the advantages of what Twitter offers while also being a new , unique thing. Threads feels more like Twitter, but by Zuckerberg, and the IG crowd seem less like natural writers than the journalists on Substack I initially rolled my eyes at Substack being this big YC company around email lists, but I did admire some of their writers and since I’ve checked out their platform I’ve been extremely impressed. It of course doesn’t have the same cultural cachet as Twitter but it also has none of the Taylor Swift deepfakes or bot armies. So a lot of headwinds. If I could bet on Threads, X, or Substack I’d wager on the Stack.

boplicity 3y ago
Substack has loads of real businesses 100% dependent on the platform, which is an incredible asset for the network as a whole. These are run by people that are going to fight hard to make Substack a valuable service. This is something that Twitter never quite figured out, though Facebook has to a certain extent with Pages.
benzible 3y ago
Substack has plenty of stigma [1], esp. among the type of people who left Twitter because they don't appreciate Elon's right wing extremism, including endorsement of actual Nazis [2] [1] https://cybernews.com/news/platformer-leaves-substack/ https://cybernews.com/news/platformer-leaves-substack/ [2] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-antisemitic-conspiracy-theory-tweet_n_65562923e4b0e476701328b4 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-antisemitic-conspir...

anshulbhide 3y ago

I literally don't know anyone who uses Threads.

mliker 3y ago
I literally don't know anyone who watches cricket, and yet it's a world famous sport beloved by many many people. Case in point, it's erroneous to judge an app by your local network.
- deadbabe 3y ago
  Perhaps his network is a robust sampling of people from all walks of life, and still he doesn’t know anyone that uses Threads.

badwolf 3y ago

It seems it's once again time for the HN elite to declare Threads dead because they personally don't use it or know anyone in their amazing inner circle who uses it. This will surely be the year of the Linux desktop!

EGreg 3y ago
I don’t know anyone who uses Web3. It’s just a useless technology searching for a solution. All that growth in adoption is fake, I am sure of it. Threads is as bad as Web3. Clearly no one wants it. Just wait…
- misiti3780 3y ago
  Chris Dixon is still pumping it!

misiti3780 3y ago

I do not know anyone that uses threads, and 1/2 the people in this thread are talking it up because they hate everything about Elon Musk. We wont be using/talking about threads in 2 years. If you disagree, lets bet.

Phil_Latio 3y ago

We need a HN exclusive Musk Bingo game.

xeckr 3y ago

I find X unusable with all the gore and shock content that makes its way into my feed.

willsmith72 3y ago
For me it's 2008 Facebook junk memes. Idk what that says about my watch stats, I swear I hate them

developersdevel 3y ago

I feel like this is like comparing a teenager’s YoY % growth and a newborn’s. Of course the newborn is going to have monstrous growth.

TheAceOfHearts 3y ago

Threads will probably only keep getting worse with time. Over the past year I've noticed a massive increase in ads on Instagram... Right now Threads is basically ad-free, but that won't last forever. I know maybe one of two people that sometimes post on Thread, but it doesn't particularly feel like there's a strong sense of community. I think the era of public social media has kinda come to an end, and most interesting conversations have moved to private group chats and community Discord servers. The only people I've seen participating regularly on Threads are people with massive followings, and even most of those barely seem to get any meaningful engagement. Right now I just use Twitter to follow artists and a few tech personalities. But for most posters past a certain number of followers opening their replies is just utterly pointless. It's full of memes and irrelevant replies trying to farm views or engagement by leeching off the OP.

scrame 3y ago

I'm guessing this is a mandatory app install on a new phone.

pentagrama 3y ago

Yeah, I never signed up to Threads and on my Instagram feed the other day I saw a message saying "Sabrina sent you a message on Threads" with a picture of a girl in bikini that I never see. I tap on that and a modal dialog pops up saying "Sign Up to Threads to read the message".

uptownfunk 3y ago

Thank goodness for X. Frankly it may make sense to convert it into a non profit in the interim and then for profitize it once it can be run properly. If it were not for X then there is very little hope for American democracy.

deleted 3y ago

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deadbabe 3y ago

If Threads can manage to stick around for a few years I think it’s bound to pick up. Its catalyst might not be the current generations, it could be angling for Gen Alpha eventually.

uptownfunk 3y ago

Huge X reader, actually used it more since Elon took it over and even more after reading the bio. One of the best things to come out for American democracy. Very clear he is being targeted especially after the ridiculous Delaware ruling.

ethanbond 3y ago
The ridiculous Delaware ruling being the one where they found “if you sign a contract you are legally bound to its terms?” Quite an exotic and ridiculous ruling lol

arctac 3y ago

Trading one overlord over another is never a wise choice.

hojinkoh 3y ago

After the presidential election in Taiwan earlier this month, many important political figures (current president, next president, opposition leaders, A LOT OF parliament members...) suddenly got on Threads and started posting there actively. Their followers naturally also followed them there. As for the reason... I still don't understand why lol

hn1986 3y ago

Really curious why this post got flagged? Unfortunately, it's typical on here for any competitor to Musk's companies. I hope @dang realizes this is a problem.