I've been a pretty frequent user since launch. It's really taken off in the past month or so, with news and sports. The NBA has replaced a lot of its court-side Twitter/X branding with Threads.
There's also a very strong growing tech and design presence.
As much as I don't want to see the Zuckerverse succeed, Meta has a "we're the lesser evil" position at the moment, at least their Not-CEO hasn't told advertisers to go fuck themselves. If I worked for Meta, I would make getting companies and celebrities into Threads a priority.
Ignoring how the app and platform are, I couldn’t stomach their data requirements. Like, why do you need to know about my health? You are a messaging app!
> Zuck told you you're a dumbfuck for giving him your data. (Look up the IM chat.)
I used to agree with you, but Zuck said that many, many years ago -- I'm not saying Zuck has changed, but it's not really accurate to brandish something he said in 2004 (as a 19 year old college student) as an accurate portrayal of him now.
I'm somewhat amazed someone can write a comment like this in (almost) 2024 without a hint of sarcasm. Especially when they're taking someone to task about giving too much weight to what someone "said" twenty years ago.
Sure, disregard what the founder said when he initially founded the company. Just, oh I don't know, give a little weight to all that the company -- not said mind you -- but actually did in the last twenty years with regards to the data in question. Recalling all the scandals within that period, you'll find that they nicely line up with that sentiment that was expressed by the founder twenty years ago.
You can say he's no worse than Musk perhaps, but going around telling people to disregard what someone said some time ago when the quote actually corroborates all the action taken since then is a rather bad faith interpretation of the author's intent.
And adding caveats like "I'm not saying Zuck has changed" just comes off as a weird cop-out. When someone is quoting that statement, they are explicitly arguing that he hasn't changed. So unless you're arguing that he has changed, the content of your comment is almost entirely vacuous.
> And adding caveats like "I'm not saying Zuck has changed" just comes off as a weird cop-out.
My main point is that you can't really judge someone by something they said 19 years ago, as a young & naive startup founder. I don't know about yourself, but I've definitely said things over a decade ago that I find quite embarrassing now.
There are much more pressing points to highlight, some of which your comment discusses, but hand-picking decades-old quotes feels quite vacuous in itself.
> at least their Not-CEO hasn't told advertisers to go fuck themselves
Since when we think of advertisers as a force for good? I always thought of them as the ones for whom the platforms are secretly working, while pretending they care for their users.
I've been thinking about it in the last few days. Wasn't the idea that capitalists seek profit, and people and government care about the ethics and the politics and the law? Feels strange to be rooting for corporations to set the political standards for the public.
Sure that’s what you’ve been sold by bad actors, but that’s definitely not how capitalists have been defined for most of history until very recently by some bad actors.
At a bare minimum, capitalism requires capitalists to be ethical because if they’re not their customers will rebel. But comments like yours which explicitly try and excuse bad behavior because we should expect bad behavior tries to undermine the most basic capitalist tool to eliminate bad behavior.
Heck, even Elon Musk’s entire original justification for buying Twitter was explicitly supposed to not be about profit.
I don't know how much is just wishful thinking, but if there is one thing that it would be very interesting to see is a world where major orgs end up using Threads as a stepping stone out of the walled gardens.
I mean, why can't an organization like the NBA establish their own social media presence? Especially if they do end up federating out completely? Why do they need to keep relying on Facebook and playing the game according to Facebook rules, when they could just set up their own server and quickly get their audience in the Fediverse?
There's already an NBA App, I imagine they could set up their own social network, but I guess then the headache is, they'd have to manage a social network - which can be a bunch of monkeys at typewriters flinging the vilest things at each other, the topic might not even be basketball.
I guess there's a market for shovels* there, a white label social media app/backend, customizable for organizations. Sure there's the fediverse, but companies would rather deal with someone they can call to fix things.
*) if you're in a gold rush, don't be another goldminer, sell shovels instead.
Then you have market fatigue for the user. After living in a world of Twitter where you can consume all the things you desire and discuss all those things in the same setting, very few people want to be jumping from app-to-app, website-to-website to talk to different groups of people about different topics.
Twitter was (still is?) a true community center, digestible in a format that's quick and easy. That's the allure to the average user.
There is also the discovery component.
The Athletic (https://theathletic.com), which is an excellent source of news for all sports leagues, does have a pretty decent place for discussion, but its engagement pales in comparison to the likes of Twitter (and even Threads now).
The discovery component is overblown. Any news org that has a website with a "Follow us on Twitter" button could just as easily have a "Follow us on the Fediverse" link pointing straight to their AP address.
> could just as easily have a "Follow us on the Fediverse" link pointing straight to their AP address
Ah! I do agree there. I mistook the op I replied to. I was assuming they were referring to the website itself being the source of content and discussion, not simply a referral to AP/Threads/X/whatever.
Yeah, I mean that these orgs could have their own servers and set it up for federation.
Like you said, The Athletic already has a place of discussion which pales in comparison with the Fediverse. Imagine if they transformed their forums into a Lemmy-compatible system, and each of their journalists had their own @theathletic handle. They would be at the same time:
- keeping control of their social media presence
- stop contributing to someone else's platform
- creating opportunities for extra revenue based on their extended audience.
> I imagine they could set up their own social network,
The point is not running their own network to have everyone there, the idea is to have a federated instance where they set up accounts for their teams, coaches, players, etc.
What is more valuable, brand-wise? "Follow @lebron@threads.net" or "follow @lebron@nba.com"?
> they'd have to manage a social network
Pretty sure they already have a sizeable team dedicated to managing/running their social media accounts and presence?
> companies would rather deal with someone they can call to fix things.
Of course, just like they have someone to manage their website, the mobile app development, etc, etc.
The NBA is bizarre. Go see what they do for Canadian web audiences. They redirect nba.com to "sportingnews.com" in a way that makes you think there's been some sort of web hijack or bad DNS.
Okay, even if the NBA is stupid, the team managers aren't. Why can't, e.g, Mark Cuban put together a Mavericks server, get a service for their fans, exclusive content, etc, etc?
Shit, does anyone know how I could pitch this to him?
That's like asking "what is the value of having your own website?"
How about "Sign up to mavericks.fans for $3.99/month and get exclusive content and direct access to the players, priority for tickets, alternative streams..."?
These ideas are a dime a dozen in pro sports. NBA were selling NFTs as "exclusive content" through Top Shot not long ago.
Anyway, this $3.99/mo stuff doesn't work outside of the VC-subsidized world where subscriber growth is more important than revenue. Getting sponsorship money and working with sports betting companies is where the money's at.
Well I think sports betting companies / sponsorship money is where all the low hanging fruit is next to adding games in the season.
I'm pretty sure the "base load" (> 1/3) is just ticket sales given the huge upswing in the 21/21 season ($3.6B) [1]. IIUC, the TV deal is "only" 2.5B/yr [2] and I assume all of the FanDuel ads get paid to the TV companies and not the league.
If they just use a website, they have to put links to Youtube to share videos, or Twitter links to share news, or Facebook if they want to run a promotion/poll.
By running their own federated social media server, they get to be in control of the conversation.
(I'm telling you, sometimes these responses feel like talking with the MS exec who said that internet search was not needed because people had bookmarks)
You're missing the point though. The users are already on the website, and on twitter, YouTube and tiktok. Those platforms have tools to control the conversation already.
Federated Social Media is a technical solution to a people problem.
> sometimes these responses feel like talking with the MS exec who said that internet search was not needed because people had bookmarks
And likewise, these responses feel like talking with a door to door salesperson. If your only argument is that you can have a worse experience, but be in control of it, you're not going to win the argument.
> The users are already on the website, and on twitter, YouTube and tiktok.
There is a non-negligible number of people who are leaving Twitter and are trying to get rid of Youtube.
> worse experience
Why? Don't give me arguments based on circumstances. Mastodon is not the endgame here. The apps can be improved and content discovery mechanisms can be implemented. What is "fundamentally worse" about federated social media?
Your definition of non-negligible is my definition of insignificant or irrelevant.
I'm still on X, and despite the people I follow declaring they're leaving, it's still the place to be. They all still post.
> Why? Don't give me arguments based on circumstances.
You're the one claiming it's an improvement, the onus is on you to convince me why it's an improved experience. That said, I'm happy to give you my perspective.
Centralised services collect and colocate the information. If I follow the mavericks, i likelt want to be kept up to date with other stuff going with the NBA. Twitter, Instagram, tiktok do that in a way that hundreds of millions of people find valuable. If I want a source of news owned by mavericks, I can visit their website already. That exists, right now, for me to go and look at.
There's the question of "which mark Cuban" - is markcuban@mavs the right one, or markcuban@nba or markcuban@cuban (which has no affiliation to either the NBA, Mark Cuban or the mavericks). X has this (well, it had it and then fucked it), tiktok has this, threads has this solved. If I go and register markcuban@threads, and start posting impersonating mark Cuban, meta will step in (I imagine). You may not want that, but he does, meta does, and millions of people who use their services do.
For services like YouTube, they provide an Audience for NBA fans to show similar content to - you think the NBA doesn't want to get eyeballs from people who are interested in NFL?
And lastly, this is the nail in the coffin:
> The apps can be improved and content discovery mechanisms can be implemented. What is "fundamentally worse" about federated social media?
The fact that the apps are worse and the content discovery mechanisms aren't implemented. That's the magic and value in social media. You get it right, you win (see tiktok). You tweak it and get it wrong, people leave (see Facebook). You don't have it? People stay where they are, because I want to see videos of pandas, otters and frogs with knitted sweaters even though I didn't know I wanted the latter until I saw it.
That's objectively false. Traffic has gone down to the point that they dropped about 10 spots in list of most visited/accessed websites.
> the onus is on you to convince me why it's an improved experience.
On open networks, I have:
- No ads.
- No data tracking.
- No algorithm that promotes content that I do not want to see (fine, Twitter "solved" this by separating the followers from "for you" tabs).
- assurance that I won't be treated as a second class citizen unless I pay for a "blue check"
> There's the question of "which mark Cuban"
This is one of the criticisms that have no root in practical reality. Basically everyone that's left Twitter for Mastodon has written a post saying "here's my new handle". And has any high-profile figure started a conversation with anyone via social media, without any form of previous introduction or method to check their claims?
> you think the NBA doesn't want to get eyeballs from people who are interested in NFL?
Why do you think that wouldn't be possible in a federated/distributed network? Individuals will pull the content to their feeds according to their interests and propagate further to their network. The content might be originated in separate central points, but they end up diffused through the network just the same.
> The fact that the apps are worse and the content discovery mechanisms aren't implemented.
I signed up today and I was disappointed to see that every thread in my "stream" had text followed by an image. I thought Thread was going to be text-only? This reminds me too much of Instagram.
I returned to it because someone linked to it a few weeks ago.
It seemed to be far more vibrant for the communities I follow and had even exceeded Twitter activity in a few.
I think it seems to be settling in nicely. Since I started looking at it again they’ve added topics (name?) which should help traction a lot.
Ultimately I will probably delete Threads as well because I’m increasingly worried about the downsides of such a public and yet instant mass social network (if nothing else on my own mental wellbeing) but it seems to be doing pretty well.
Was DOA for me when I found out I had to grow my audience from scratch there and the algo feed seemingly learnt nothing from my decade+ of IG use, yeah no thanks.
I am no longer experiencing brand slop [0]. For following tech news, it's pretty good - the Verge and their journalists in particular seem to live on the app, and I had no issue following the OpenAI debacle on it.
I can see the NBA side of Threads is growing, and Woj in particular is apparently moving over his weekly AMAs to Threads.
Activity is fairly strong. The viewcounts are lower than Twitter, but I don't trust Twitters' viewcounts at all [2]. Either way, Threads is almost certainly the small fish in Twitter's pond.
Yeah, it seems like their "slow burn" strategy is seeing dividends in a very deliberate way. I don't know that we'll ever get a "tipping point", and I know that the platform will never be "good", but it definitely seems like it will have its fair share of the social media pie sooner, rather than later. The NBA stuff is interesting because I was thinking that as soon as threads could market itself as valuable to sports (my thought was the NFL), then they would be in a great position to siphon that remaining traffic away from twitter.
Feels, to me, like in two years twitter will feel more like 4chan (pretty close now), threads will feel more like a disneyland/facebook/corporate version of dorsey twitter, and mastadon will go on feeling like the yahoo-era tumblr until the next major upset.
I'm really hoping that federated solutions come up with something so compelling that everyone just switches over, but I feel like we're past that point with this latest social media shakeup.
It's NFL news, so yes that would be the right way to do it, unless there is some sort of neural implant that would telepathically beam the same coverage.
There must be a million billion services for NFL news already. I find it amusing how (mainly nontechnical) society changes its communication platforms like their underwear. Current Thing gets boring, Next Thing comes, jump on supposed hype train, wait X years, repeat. Of course you can kinda program this process with ads. It's so... banal.
Oh, nice! Thanks for the data! I don't follow any of it, myself (can't even use threads), so it's nice to have a little confirmation on that!
Like I said, I've kind of thought this was the trend. Threads made pretty clear that they were going to be deferential to brands, and I'm betting that Facebook has more than enough money to fete itself to the NFL's whims in a far more compelling way than Twitter can. I'm very curious to see what comes of all of this in the spring, when the NFL can really reconsider its partnerships. They don't often switch things up mid-stream, but they seem to ALWAYS switch things up, post season, to whoever's going to pay them the most/give them the best deal. "Official X of the NFL" is not what I would call a "rare" designation.
So if Threads can put together a compelling set of numbers (actual experience on the app aside, the numbers they have are still pretty impressive; that's usually not enough to convince a human being, but it's usually plenty enough to sign a contract), they could get a one-two punch of pulling in the biggest sports talk and then attracting all other sports talk.
But, of course, that's top-down thinking. The same result could come about of very different circumstances, given proper engagement from the NBA demographic. So it'll be interesting to see if March brings about a full fledged NFL push, or a hard promotion of March Madness. (or, you know, maybe nothing; threads has been moving at a glacial pace and I'm way out ahead of any thing they've indicated even thinking about)
> threads has been moving at a glacial pace and I'm way out ahead of any thing they've indicated even thinking about
I'm not so certain that's an accurate statement. Threads launched only 5 months ago, and they've made some fairly large progress on things users have requested the most, and there's a number of things that are currently being tested in certain parts of the world (ex: trends).
It'll be interesting to see if they can continue that pace into the new year.
Personally, I just want to see a lists and bookmarks feature, which they've confirmed is in the works.
Eh, I'm willing to give them every inch of their due, and I'm immune to sophomoric or superficial complaints about the platform that would make it seem like it's failing in any way, but I really must insist that the pace is still pretty slow.
Now, I'll grant you that they are tending their own garden and putting in to place the things they want to put into place, at the cautious and respectful pace of a much more sensible company. But even taking your example of 'bookmarks', that's a REALLY simplistic feature. Be prepared for at least some snide eyebrows, if not snide remarks from this commentariat, about the idea that five months after launch, you still don't have a bookmark feature. Again, I'm not throwing any particular shade. Just noting that the pace of progress is well slower than modern companies/apps have accustomed us to expecting.
If you have a Mastodon account somewhere you will be able to interact/follow.
Posts are not just going got flood over, though. Each Mastodon instance has its own local view into the fediverse, and discoverability depends on what other users on your instance have subscribed to. Some instance admins will decide to not host anything Meta, or limit discoverability, as they do with other servers.
I didn't want to call attention to it, but it does appear that this particular topic is charged. While it isn't astroturfing (in the sense that Twitter executives), there does seem to be a lot of impetus to defend Twitter.
After the Instagram subscription debacle, no thanks.
There’s no reason to trust Meta with any of your data, they have to sort out their privacy policies first.
"launches for nearly half a billion more users" is a weird way to put it. They are not users yet, they are a market, or potential users in other words. If I release an app, I'd feel disingenuous telling that I "launched an app for 7.8 billion users"
Agreed. Twitter used to be terrible and now it's actually gotten pretty good as I appreciate having different viewpoints on a single platform. You do have to block the conspiracy spam but I don't see how that's any different than having to block the fanatically woke posts that used to crowd the conversation.
Personally, as long as it’s owned my Meta, i just see “Threats” as the name. With this, i mean to data sniffing and privacy concerns. Plus, as much as it seems a good product, how long will it take to be “enshittified”?
It seems to me the latest “social medias” have the same formula, launch as a decent app, gather a massive user base, business realise the money potential, the application gets uglier with time as Ads are everywhere and content is generated by bots.
One interesting feature is thar they’re trying the ActivityPub protocol, which will allow them to interconnect with Mastodon servers. This is also not all good, as it means they’ll start to sniff data from there. But, at least i can block the threads server entirely preventing this :)
