Not surprising. No web app, no following feed, no hashtag for searching.
It basically just text version of Instagram. I want to see more of the post from people I follow, not random celebrities and companies.
Seems like the leadership doesn't understand what made Twitter popular, it's the 5th most visited website in the world despite having less than a third of active users as the 4th place Instagram.
And the web page stupidly asks me to log in if I want to see more of a user's posts. I can't take their claims that they will publish posts via ActivityPub seriously.
I just think the moral story is somewhat humorous. Jumping from twitter to threads is like swapping your Russian AK47 for an Israeli Galil and imagining you’ve made some moral improvement. If that’s the only reason to swap, you can count on most people yawning.
All the "THIS time Twitter is in trouble!" posters are nowhere to be found. The Google+ of Twitter clones predictably is already floundering.
Network effects are a hell of a thing, not that Threads was even a good product. The algorithm SUCKS, the feed is just random garbage instead of relevant content that interests you, or current world events.
SELECT * FROM posts ORDER BY RAND() doesn't make for a good social media experience.
If you have no follow feed and you’re forced to come back and see low effort posts and pictures from influencers instead every time you check it out, yeah, that’ll do it.
After most of my Threads sessions, my feed is essentially full of "Posts from this user have been muted" after silencing all the force-fed clickbait garbage tossed my way.
The interface is clean and light and honestly I like it. But I'd like it even more if I could have a feed showing only the users I follow.
This ruined Facebook years ago for me and continues to make social media unappealing.
I used to open Facebook every day, scroll down to see all my friends' new posts, and then close it once it said "all caught up!"
Of course, Facebook decided that the possibility of actually being "done" browsing Facebook for the day is a no-go, they want me engaged for 25 hours a day, so they will endlessly throw irrelevant crap at you.
The recommendation feed shows the issue with "filter bubble" theory - if you start seeing posts from people in your outgroup, it doesn't familiarize you with them, it makes you even /more/ annoyed with them.
In the case of Threads for me that's a class of influencer that posts nothing but unsolicited love advice or things like "if your friends hurt you they were never really your friends" that are supposed to be 'relatable' but just make it sound like they have BPD.
The premiere of any social media app is going to signal a Gold Rush in terms of account creation. You're going to attract the claim-stakers, their foil the name-squatters, the botters, the sleeper-creators, the early-adopters, the refugees of St. Elsewhere, the megalomaniacs, the API-experimenters, the app-writers. And then all those accounts are going to go dark and bide their time, because account creation was the goal, not engagement or participation.
I think Twitter wants to compete with yt by the direction Twitter is going. I saw a tweet from one user suggesting a video/photo feed just like ig, followed by a reply from Elon saying that might happen.
The other thing is that threads is basically Instagram but without all the features ig has right now. Facebook is being careful since they don't want to cannibalize ig with threads since ig doesn't have any competitors rn. If you add photos, videos, etc... to threads, then you will have q repost issue. Are ig users going to repost their content on threads just because or viceversa? Why should I follow you if that's the case?
The third part (controversial) is that you have to "thread" carefully because of content moderation guidelines. I'm left or right but let's call a spade a spade: social media, in its entirety, is left leaning. If you take that into consideration, then you'll loose at least 40% of your user base.
Threads is aiming get most brands, celebrities, and influencers to be on the platform, having a "Twitter" like experience they can control (with fb's help) and monetize it asap. They know hot takes (politics, news, sports to a certain extent...) are difficult to control; That's why zuck said they weren't trying to "compete with Twitter" because those things divide people really fast, but takes regarding celebrities, food, etc... Are what brands want.
Twitter will still be "that" place. Threads (if it doesn't cannibalize ig) will be the alternative only if you want to engage with the same content you see in ig, but text version (dull and false, most of the time).
> We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load. Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else.
I maintain my assertion that what might kill twitter is not threads or any other competitor, but simple cashflow problems.
Elon is asset-rich but cash-poor, and I don't know how long he can fund his current hobby.
It basically just text version of Instagram. I want to see more of the post from people I follow, not random celebrities and companies.
Seems like the leadership doesn't understand what made Twitter popular, it's the 5th most visited website in the world despite having less than a third of active users as the 4th place Instagram.