I'm kind of amazed at how saturated the news is with stories about Threads. And not just tech news, but also every mainstream news site has at least one or more "submarine" marketing articles promoting Threads. Meta Marketing Team: You're not fooling anyone into thinking these are grassroots and viral, but honestly, well done with the media saturation. Meta's clearly got all the right channels on full-blast. It's really impressive.
HN is downright quiet on the topic, with only 21 posts over 20 comments since the launch (2023-07-05), 4 posts per day. Compare that to the Reddit blackout posts which seem to be closer to 8 posts per day. Only 8 posts with over 100 comments, whereas it's hard to find even a single Reddit blackout post at less than 100 comments. My friends in every other community are buzzing about Threads, but here on HN someone comes into every thread to remind me that Mastodon doesn't need growth to be a success, whether the thread was about Mastodon or not.
Just gives me more of that feeling that the community here is becoming more detached. Maybe it's just me, but I'm watching The Great Fragmentation with open eyes to see what comes next.
Maybe it's because HN is more like Reddit than Twitter/Threads, so there's more reasons to care about it. And a lot of Redditors probably came to talk about it here, some because their favorite subreddit was on strike.
Also the Reddit situation was very dramatic and adversarial, Threads is just a new boring product with a clean launch.
I think it's more that the HN crowd cannot stand to think, much less utter the phrase "you've gotta hand it to Mark Zuckerberg and crew." That's at least the feeling I have to get over when I praise Threads.
I think it's important to remember that virality can be fickle and Threads may go the way of Clubhouse. We really don't know where it'll land up. Among Us was the hit game of the pandemic and now it's not.
But maybe the crowd here should be a bit more humble and restrained by their biases, it's a useful art to practice. When I first saw YouTube in late 2005 I told all my friends that it would go nowhere because Flash was a resource intensive, proprietary technology. Now I pay for YouTube Premium.
Why would you say that? No one should be surprised or really even impressed that Meta could make Threads even as fast as they did. They've already made this kind of app several times.
That wouldn't be an interesting take or conversation and is sort of against the HN vibe.
Not to say that doesn't happen all the time, but agree with GP; they did a thing meh. Will seen if it gets traction over Twitter and then that will be interesting.
Honestly there's no need for a Twitter with porn. It's not like there's any lack of options for publishing or viewing porn on the internet.
Of course if Twitter wants to host porn more power to 'em, it's just not a make or break differentiator. I have a feeling in a year or two people will assume that if you're still on Twitter, it's for the porn, with the plausible deniability of "no man, it's for the free speech!"
I've been toying with all the various Twitter alternatives as they have had their 5 minutes of fame and Threads definitely feels different and like it might stick.
That feels like very big news but not to HN I guess?
I think over time HN has become more like a lot of other tech communities; a bit ideological, zealous, and detached. Most of these groups have ingroups (the virtuous hackers) and outgroups (CIA, NSA, RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, Big Tech, Social Media, techbros, billionaires, <zeitgeist enemy>.) This is the kind of community you'll find in a lot of FSF mailing lists, Libera (formerly Freenode) channels, and Linux subreddits. Threads, being a Meta project, is an outgroup project, so not worth talking about no matter how many use it. The other Twitter alternatives align more with the ingroup so worth boosting beyond their actual usage. It depends on what you want out of a community, some people want a space that is a bit relaxed and others want something a bit more cliquish. The FSF orbit communities have always been on the cliquish side.
For me if I wanted something more zealous I'd spend more time on Libera channels or FSF MLs. The few I do spend time in satisfy my fill of that culture.
My less cynical viewpoint is that it just isn't that interesting.
It's a bare-bones Twitter clone made by Meta. There's no interesting new technology to discuss, no open source angle, no discussion on the company founder that hasn't been done 100 times.
HN has plenty of discussions about interesting Meta projects - Quest, React, the metaverse, financial discussions, etc. I just don't think there's much to grip people on this topic.
Nobody has covered the interesting angle -- this is the first time I've seen social media companies launch direct competitors, rather than a novel way to capture attention.
Yeah, and even TikTok itself has done this. There was this flash in the pan social media app that was popular for like 2-3 months at some point in the past year (I forget when) called BeReal and TikTok added an exact clone of the functionality.
They've been stealing features from the competition for years. Snapchat was really novel when it came out, then the others created effectively the same UX. Clubhouse was a novel take as well, then Twitter added a clone of it right into the main app.
I can't actually think of the last time one of the existing networks launched a new app to compete rather than just stealing UX features, that is a new one to me for sure!
Hasn't Threads been around for awhile? I thought I ran across it when browsing Facebook's store page on one of the app stores and saw it a long time ago.
Regardless I do think its funny that Facebook had photos but Instagram is still a product and now Facebook has always had status updates and now Threads is a product. Facebook is almost just a mashup of Instagram + Threads. Or in a way some demographic of users liked a Facebook experience but for photos only (Instagram) and another set of users liked a Facebook experience but for status updates only (Threads).
I can offer some simpler alternative explanations, though it's possible that it could be a combination of these things.
* This is anecdotal, but I quit using Twitter in 2016, so the "downfall" of it doesn't impact me much and I am not looking for a replacement. News about all of this is mildly interesting, but I have no personal investment in the outcome really.
* One of the things that Twitter did in the past couple weeks that they took a lot of heat for was that they gated viewing tweets to having an account. But Instagram and Facebook have been gated like this for a while now.
You can view thumbnails of the 9 latest posts, but trying to click into the detail view on them gives you a login gate. Trying to do pretty much anything opens a login modal.
So why are we zealous and ideological for not being excited that the product that seems likely to replace it is coming from a company that does the same exact things that people are upset about?
As the poster above said, the hype may not be organic, so I wouldn’t expect communities to be talking about threads. The media might be all the source of the hype.
Threads was on the front page for an entire day or two. A sizable percentage of the entire lifetime of the App.
Twitter and Musks other ill-adventures will continue to dominate HN though. Zuckerberg is not part of the HN in-crowd and will draw about as much water as his other services.
It’s been downloaded close to 100 million times at this point and has blown past every growth record to date. I think it’s completely logical for every mainstream news site to mention it.
I honestly can’t imagine a source like the New York Times not having an article. Twitter’s threatened lawsuit alone merited coverage.
It’s not surprising because they are promoting it with, for example, pop ups in Instagram about claiming your username. They already have a wide reach to promote the product.
I don't know, i think this could be authentic. People have been mad at elon for a while now and there is a blood in the water - i think mainstream is interested in this drama and the new contender.
I think tech news is relatively quiet on this front because quite frankly, twitter is not that interesting as a product technically speaking. This is a political story not a technical one, and it ties into so many beats that are popular with the masses (e.g. the ultra rich being stupid and getting their comeuppance, increased influence of the far right with twitter being seen as a breeding ground, musk specifically being hated by a large segment of the population, etc).
Are people outside of the tech industry and Politics really concerned at all with Elon or Twitter?
My anecdotal experience is that the only people I interact with where this comes up are either people who seen to be parroting a story from 24 hour news or a techy that abandoned Twitter shortly after the purchase (many of have since whom quietly returned).
> Are people outside of the tech industry and Politics really concerned at all with Elon or Twitter?
Are people who dont care about politics the target audience of the mainstream "news"? I'm sure lots of people dont care about twitter drama but i think the people who read the publications talking about twitter drama are firmly in the camp of people who care, which is why said publications are talking about it.
> Are people who dont care about politics the target audience of the mainstream "news"?
Wel again I can only speak to the interactions I have with people I know, but much of my family spends an inordinate amount of time watching 24 hour news and telling me about he latest headline of the day. They don't seem to care about politics at all though, as soon as I ask questions attempting to dig deeper into the issue or political views that might lead to that stance the conversation grinds to a halt. My best read on most people that fall into the target audience of network news is that they are people more easily influenced and drawn into drama that pits one group against another.
My original question regarding Twitter really was meant as a genuine question though. The only people I have had even mention Elon Must and Twitter seem to be in the tech world, I'm curious if I'm in a bit of a bubble myself and the Elon/Twitter issues do in fact reach beyond that.
My entire friend circle is outside of tech and hate politics, and are tired of Twitter imploding.
They all want something new, or at least Twitter before Elon.
Most recently, we were trying to find news about the Paris riots, and there’s nothing but misinformation (videos from other riots) spammed consistently, that have no community notes, and have nothing but racist twitter blue users pushed to the top of the replies.
It’s creating a huge fog of war when just trying to figure out what’s going on.
It’s like all the moderation systems have just gone offline.
Honest question, as someone who doesn't use Twitter: why don't you just read the papers?
For the specific case of the Paris riots, you could check on Le Figaro (right-leaning) and Le Monde (left-leaning) – yest, both of them.
I find that following two newspapers allows me to get a balanced-enough take on current events. No need to try to decipher some ultra-short quip from random people and infer the 90% of missing context on my own.
I can see the sweet spot for community-driven/social journalism:
- Get updates between the new cycles. If you can get the scores for the football match in tomorrow’s paper, why even need to see the game?
- Get more targeted information, i.e. my favorite pastry shop is where some stuff went down, was it impacted? Someone might have commented on that/taken photos nearby.
- Get an even more unbiased opinion. Both the right and left leaning papers might have the same sponsor they happen to not make disparaging remarks about, or the local government might be able to quash things.
Then again wherever you have eyeballs looking you’ll have people trying to push an agenda in the raw feed, whether it’s political, economic or clout chasing.
> Most recently, we were trying to find news about the Paris riots
I've been very frustrated by this for a few years now. At least since the start of the pandemic response, I've noticed myself having a very hard time finding news on topics the BLM protests/riots, trucker rallies, Paris protests/riots, etc that didn't feel extremely controlled or moderated. Finding what seems to be unbiased updates on the war has also been particularly difficult, though that's kind of expected given that it's effectively an active hot war between Russia and Nato at this point.
Agreed. I think people underestimate the extent to which major and influencers have left Twitter entirely due to sociocultural and political events. Never mind the fact that Twitter has 700m users v the many billions more that Meta has.
There’s a strong likelihood Threads exists as a Twitter alternative but not necessarily a direct competitor, simply because of demographics.
Honestly I don't fuck with social media that much besides my private Instagram, but there's more to it than just viral marketing. It's a pretty smooth app that appeals to people like my 18-25-ish age that feels like Twitter has gotten super weird and toxic. The honeymoon effect won't last forever, but it has something that a lot of social media users are looking for.
The real market is for brands, they can't stand the insanity on Twitter.
I think of Musk's idea of turning Twitter into a super app. Well, if I go into a business and somebody asks me to pay with Twitter that business is going to be associated with Musk, Twitter, and all that. If the business is selling anti-woke razor blades it might be a good fit, but an ordinary business just doesn't want to be associated with that. Contrast that to Visa, Mastercard, or American Express, all of which have worked hard to be associated with a positive image.
I can just imagine it, “spend $500/month with Twitter Pay and you get a green checkmark, promoting your tweets even above the already promoted blue checkmark tweeters”
Meta isn’t that stupid. Messing with the verification system is one of the blunders that put Twitter in the position where Threads could eat its lunch.
The problem with blue checkmark wasn’t that it was paid for verification. The problem was that there was no verification. You paid to be verified as anybody you’d like.
I’m no twitter owner, but to me the reasonable thing would be to put the name on the credit card on the account along with the checkmark.
That would scale for personal accounts, but not businesses. They could be charged extra and manually verified against national business registries.
The comparables on my mind are the EV (Extended Validation) SSL certificates and the Legal Entity Identifier, both of which involve a lookup against business records for a corporation/LLC and have a sustainable cost of around $100 year.
EV failed in the marketplace. “No LEI, No Trade” made a lot of companies get an LEI but last time I looked it was widespread for companies to keep using their LEI without renewing it.
Instagram offered the same system (pay for blue check) shortly after twitter. But yes, they didn't revoke anyone's existing tick or make it a prerequisite for future "notable" people.
The problem is, it’s made by Meta. I remember when Facebook was a place you went to get in touch with friends. That was a long time ago now - at some point they stopped showing the feed in chronological order and I thought it was the worst change. They just kept making it worse. Now, if I go look, most of my feed is just random “viral” content and ads.
Meta takes a thing you find useful and gradually tweaks it until it no longer does what you originally wanted it for. I don’t trust them to run a service .
This is correct but it's helpful to specify how much more toxic twitter has become than other platforms.
For example anti-LGBT sentiments are common on other platforms just like they are common in society. But on twitter people like Jake Shields literally call for the murder of therapists, doctors, and teachers who are supportive of LGBT teens. How did twitter respond? First they let the tweets get thousands of engagements. Then they removed the tweets without banning Shields. Finally they removed other people's tweets, archive links, and screenshots documenting Shields' hate speech. Jake Shields is still on twitter pushing toxic lies and disinfo.
TL;DR: Elon Musk's twitter protects people who want to murder doctors and teachers.
I think it was a very deliberate ploy by Musk to shift the political Overton window to way to the right.
Unfortunately for him & his backers, the political shenanigans and general incompetence left Twitter vulnerable, with users seemingly choosing to trust Meta over it, of all fucking companies. This will be case study in business school for years.
Threads is polished in a way that Mastodon isn't. I'm part of a few Japanese subcultures and most of them couldn't make heads or tails of the Fediverse despite the existence of Misskey. Threads though? They signed up through Instagram and were posting in minutes. I really want Meta to commit to federation, even if existing Mastodon communities defederate so that techie weirdos like us can live their dreams of running custom clients and interfacing with regular folks (like XMPP federation with GChat back in the day.)
Yeah, Twitter is super big in Japan for mainstream teen and young adult users in the 18-25 city student/young professional demographic. Same with Instagram. Mastodon adjacent stuff like Misskey, Pawoo, and Mstdn got the reputation for being for hosting weird, niche, or pretty much illegal content, and nobody really understands the point of Fediverse.
Also, mastodon just isn't easy like twitter/reddit/insta is. There's hurdles you have to get past. It's to the degree that, despite being the target demo for masto, I still haven't really gotten into it. Too many hoops. Even a flippin' bbs seems to make more sense at this point
A friend of mine tried mastodon on my recommendation. But he couldn't find a "login with facebook" button, which is how he assesses whether a website is trustworthy. Mastodon to him is "like a scam version of threads". You'd be surprised how prevalent this view is with normal non-hn crowd.
A good chunk of them did, and some of them stuck around. I've had an account going back to 2017, and my feed is far more active today than it was before Elon purchased the site.
Honestly its amazing that as many people went with mastodon as they did.
Ideologically motivated (i.e. "federated-first") open source projects never succeed in attracting mainstream users. They have to make too many compromises, and inevitably prioritize their motivation (federation) over what is necessary to attract the mainstream (e.g. excellent UX).
The fact that mastadon is doing as well as it is, is sign number 1 that the market is begging for something like threads to happen.
On Twitter and other centralized social media this is very easy to do. On Mastodon, it is not. I have to copy the URL, paste it into a text field on my instance, and then like it.
Threads has accumulated a huge number of users in a very short amount of time, and it's related to the instability, near-implosion we've seen at Twitter from Musk's leadership. Of course that's big news.
It's just not really big news here, because people here REALLY hate Meta (and probably dislike the Twitter-style model of social media anyway).
I don’t know with Twitter going through various meltdowns having met a step up and say hey, you can come here instead I feel like it’s pretty big news. This product also wasn’t at least on my radar at all and so I think it was sort of a big surprise for everybody. The eighth largest website on the planet size to go toe to toe with Twitter… Seems like big news?
I am just wondering what this app is (do not have an Instagram account so can’t try it; I had deleted mine, so not creating one). How the fuck everyone is talking about an app on HN that’s is Facebook one of the richest tech companies with one of the biggest tech pool out there which is just essentially a copy of Twitter.
It’s like kids got a new toy. Any toy. So they gotta play with it.
I can't necessarily disagree, but even if Meta wasn't marketing, Twitter suing less than 24 hours after launch meant it was going to be front page news for at least a couple days.
Did you slow clap at your last statement because you figured it all out?
Because of Elon Musk Twitter has been in the news for months. That includes his impulsive decision to buy it, firing massive amounts of people, and to keep everyone focused on him a barrage of right wing themed tweets about hot button political topics. Of course the news media is reporting on this.
Then a massive US tech company, whose founder has a hollywood blockbuster biopic, releases a clone of Twitter. That's also news.
THEN Elon Musk sues them right after the launch publically claiming former Twitter employees stole code. You know, Elon Musk, the person I mentioned who did all those things he what did.
Then you make this "oh typical US media, the Zucks has them under his liberal soft thumb" comment because no way the news would normally report on all these major public and outrageous figures along their big business infighting
You forgot the literal billionaire cage match that Musk tried to initiate but then backed out of when it seemed like Zuck wasn't afraid to fight him. Seemed like everyone was talking about it for a couple of days…
Elon didn't back out of the fight his Mom told him to cut it out. Really. I'm no Elon fan but it's pretty funny and good that his Mom has some common-sense.
In a way they are in a cage match only it's Threads vs Twitter.
Because he's Elon Musk I can't tell if his mom actually stopped the fight or you were making a pun about immaturity by implying his mother still controls his life like a kid.
yea it was pretty obvious they were spamming on the day, when you could see numerous reddit posts announcing that "threads is launching" with pretty much the exact same title in multiple subreddit, all from different accounts.
