I feel Twitter lack of moderation makes it more and more hateful, reminiscent of some usenet politics groups where conversation was impossible. There's even quite a lot of porn content. I don't know why, but I receive tons of dick pics that I'm not interested in. I tried very hard to get rid of them but was unsuccessful. I can definitely see the platform becoming unusable, while users flock to a different system for a better experience.
On the other hand, it seems some groups manage to share ideas in a positive way (e.g. cancer survivors), so it all depends on the feed algorithm, maybe most users have a postive experience. Hard to say. In any case, some minor tweaking of the feed algorithm could be enough to improve the experience.
But in the end, I think it all boils to the network effect. Will enough users migrate from Twitter to Threads. My guess is not, network effect is extremely strong. At that point, even the most upset, anti-musk, users don't seem to be leaving (which I find quite ironic).
One comment about network effects. In addition to raw numbers transferring over, it also matters a lot who those people are. In particular it'll come down to wherever the cultural kingmakers decide to stay. If Twitter's brand becomes too toxic, and you see celebrities moving over in droves because of that, everyone else will follow.
I also got a prompt to follow accounts that didn't exist yet, but my follow request was approved only after these users joined the platform. There's no proof these accounts were included in usercount estimates
What a dumb conspiracy. Like they just picked what? 1 in 20 or so of their Instagram accounts to get this "shadow account"? Or could it be exactly what the app says when you encounter that, that the follow request will be sent when that user opens a threads account?
It clearly says when you sign up that you will follow these people when they join threads. There is no evidence that these 'shadow' accounts are being included in the metrics before people sign up.
There are millions of fake account over at FB. There are multiple duolicates of accounts too. I personally had near 20+ FB accounts. Believing Threads having 100mil in such a short time especially back by a company that famously need billions of accounts to be valued in billions, is like believing Libra will be the next bitcoin.
Not necessarily, I'm in both - hedging my bets. Whichever gets me better/more engagement, this is the platform I will stick with. I'm not fond of either CEO, but Elon keeps coming off more and more as a psychotic narcissist, and I find myself rooting for Threads over Twitter for that reason alone. He needs a big L to gain some humility.
I've never (within otherwise normal times) been more stressed out and miserable than during periods when I've tried to interact systematically with and through Twitter.
The error is thinking that Twitter is a place for discourse.
It's a place where you go see what celebrities (of any field, programming counts) are promoting and maybe follow a few interesting people who use Twitter as a medium for their writing for some reason.
It's not a place where you can change anyone's opinion and if you think that you'll have a bad time.
I agree. And yet many people in positions of power look at twitter as a kind of real-time polling tool. They look at twitter reactions and think they know what people in general are feeling and doing. Then they make real decisions based on this false belief. And they do this because they are starved for information of this kind, and even though it's terrible, twitter is the only signal they have.
This desire to shape public discourse, and the decisions of the powerful, are the real stakes that drive twitter gladiators. You're right though, it's not discourse - it's "zealous advocacy" as interpreted by a peurile and distracted public.
Sure. That's not really my issue though. I got a few thousand followers, in batches, after random press coverage through the years, but never had much of anything I wanted to share. Trying to communicate anything, to build further following, was stressful, unfruitful and ultimately meaningless.
I read a while ago that people use apps like Twitter because it makes them miserable. There's a part of your brain that causes you to seek out content that makes you angry and upset. Having said that, I'm sure Threads will have enough content to keep us miserable and therefore hooked.
First point of the summary definitely tracks. There's a clash there. Plenty of overlap between the platforms (Twitter vs Instagram isn't like Sports, you can support both teams) but each platform certainly has different core purposes. News/Politics vs Lifestyle/Ecommerce in this case. So, yeah I can see why the Insta seeding will be effective at first and then drop off.
I do wonder if Meta will start adding Quality of Life changes to Insta/Threads to auto cross-post text from Insta to Threads, with linkbacks to the image content. Then they can claim higher MAU stats for the people who leave the cross-posting on. They may be bored by Threads but they may still post to it if it's automatic.
On the 2nd point, I think they will get a decent chunk of the Twitter's users. They'll attract broadly and downplay any one type of content as being their aim. That will hamper them from getting some people. Ultimately though if they get the big voices the followers will come and they can 'seed' verticals by going after those voices. They don't even need to ask for exclusivity. We've seen in recent years that Twitch and its competitors are happy to pay big bucks to grab big names. Twitter/Threads may be older concepts in social media but they can mimic the tactics the streaming platforms have been developing. I wouldn't be surprised if we start hearing about big names picking up 'deals' to move to Threads (if they haven't already) and even exclusivity deals.
On the 3rd point. I don't think Instagram has anything to fear from Threads. If anything it adds to their model by exposing more people to Instagram content by cross-posting. Sure, it's lower quality traffic for Insta than its core users, but a trickle of extra revenue from Threads is the exact kind of optimisation these giants hunt for. Coca-Cola doesn't plaster the world in multi-million dollar ad campaigns because they see a 10% increase in revenue, they do it to maintain dominance even if that cuts into their margin. Threads doesn't need to turn a profit if it helps maintain Insta and helps speed the demise of Twitter.
yep, i agree with this. twitter is on a long slow slide to irrelevance, but threads will not be the thing that scoops up all the refugees.
twitter never worked for me, but i can see its appeal to those who did like it. it was engaging. it was the best opportunity ordinary people had to interact with celebrities. it had an irreverent quality that invited whimsy.
(all that stuff is either completely destroyed now, or almost so, but that's what it had in its heyday.)
my prediction is that there will be no "new twitter." it was the product of a particular time and place that will not be repeated. its users will disperse to a lot of other platforms, none of which will fill the exact same niche that twitter did.
What makes you say that? The current alternatives seem a bit of a joke for anyone but the most extremely opinionated (in a very specific way) users when you compare them side by side.
Didn't it break engagement records twice in the past few months.
it is becoming irrelevant because the new regime is not prioritizing what was good about it. dismantling trust and safety is just one example of that.
"engagment records" ... yeah, i am pretty sure we have nobody's word for that except musk's, and he lies constantly. and even if that's true, so what? it is probably gawkers, just amazed, hardly believing what they're seeing. (in the few times i've paid attention to twitter lately, that was always my reason.)
likewise, people are pointing to the millions of sign-ups on threads.net as if that is proof that it will succeed. i don't think it proves any such thing. zuckerberg's long history of sucking the joy out of everything will ensure they will all get bored and leave.
Seems like you’re just happier believing that Elons a liar or whatever and the platforms on the way out than dealing with that it might be doing fine.
Personally I’ve found it funnier and more engaging than ever before while Bluesky feels already dead and Threads is just brand cringe. Twitter doesn’t feel in danger at all after seeing what the best the competition have to offer.
It's worth posting long-shot opinions like this. It doesn't cost anything and there's a small chance you could win a lifetime's reputation as a predictive genius.
Ha. Someone should write a service that examines a news feed and twitter, retroactively finds correct predictions and give them a reward. Call it "youwereright.com", or something.
That already exists for some people - not "which people were right" so much as "which of this persons predictions have come to pass" though. My preferred example:
This guy underestimate's a billionaire's ego. The guy spent like 25-30 billion on web3 and I still don't think he's done wasting money.
My prediction is 4-6 years. It will linger around until then and instagram people will stay on it until the end. But just like instagram, you need an account to view content so it won't see any traffic from outside sources. Like if anyone posts a link to threads I am sure they will get downvoted every single time on HN or reddit/lemmy. Twitter on the other hand, I have it all over technical documentation even and now I have to worry about broken links all over thanks to another billionaire's massive ego.
I remember begging infosec people to stop using twitter and slack over a decade ago.
Sorry, I don't remember the exact year but it feels 10years ago roughly but everyone that was on forums and irc started moving to discord and slack. Now I have 4-8gb ram between those two apps and they routinely hold chat logs and features hostage for money.
A meaningless prediction by some random tech influencer trying to push his own brand and gain subscribers.
At least prediction markets let people bet resources on different outcomes.
If OP is reading this: how sure are you about this prediction? How about you commit to donating $1000 to your favorite charity if you're wrong? I'd take someone way more seriously if they committed real resources to back up their claims.
Fired a bunch of people, probably lost a lot of institutional knowledge about the systems inside twitter. Lost engineerring moral, so new features, or bug fixes are less likely to come out (or whatever that comes out will be shit quality).
On the other hand, Musk saved twitter a bunch of money. However that doesn't really benefit users.
Fortunately, or unfortuantely, depending on your POV, twitter's network effect is so large that even such a move by Musk is not going to break twitter - at least, not in the short term. There's just too much momentum, too many users that currently rely on twitter as their source of information.
I'm not so certain, requiring login for twitter, I read has cost Twitter all of their search engine listings, which amounts to something like 30% of traffic to the site.
