Instagram’s new Twitter competitor, Threads, is off to a rocket start. Mark Zuckerberg announced 30 million activated profiles, while internal data shows over 95 million posts and 190 million likes in less than one day,
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Everyone move to Threads
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Elon is forced to sell Twitter for $50k
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Everyone leave Threads and go back to Twitter
I’m lowkey pumped about Threads even though I’ll never use it because of the prospect of Elon having to sell cheap
- Profit
- ???
- Repeat
- Lather
- Kiss
- <Redacted>
- [ Removed to preserve Lemmy’s ad revenue ]
Or
- Everyone move to Threads
- Elon is forced to sell Twitter for $50k
- Everyone leave Threads and go to BlueSky
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A new social network from Meta, without any privacy, with algorithms to show us what they want?
No, thanks. I love Mastodon.
Yeah, I really don’t get it. I understand people staying on Twitter because that’s sunk cost. They don’t want to lose their notoriety. But what the hell is the point of using Threads? Everything I’ve read about it makes it sound awful.
This article said all I needed to know:
Imagine an active comment section on an Instagram post on someone you follow. Not great, eh?
Now imagine that same comment section, make it infinitely long, AND give users the ability to include images, videos, and links that you can’t avoid seeing.
That’s Threads.
What’s there to not get. To you, the word “Privacy” is a concern. To most people, it’s “that shit that never bothered me, why care?”.
You’re here, on this platform, you’re already not most people.
It’s not just the privacy though, I get that a lot of people don’t care about that. It’s that it sounds like a total dogshit of a social media platform.
Yeah, but it’s the NEWEST dogshit platform made by <company with sizeable marketing budget>. It could be the next big thing, dogshit or not! How can you or the likes of (checks notes) AOC possibly miss out???
Great definition. 🔝
Am I the only one who finds those numbers abnormally high? The sourcing also seems suspect - going through the verge posts, they’re just quoting internal numbers with no sourcing.
Here’s my question - it says activated profiles, not 30 million signups. If a large chunk of those are Insta and FB users, it seems more than likely that a lot of those profiles could be activated internally (I work with databases, this could be as easy as changing a 0 to 1 in a field in the profile table if they’ve got it integrated right). I’m also curious as to the content of the 95 million posts - how many of those are an automated “Hi I’m on threads!” message when the profile starts up?
That being said, I’m not curious nor stupid enough to actually signup and let them Zuck my data, but this smacks of astroturfing.
Instagram has more than 2 billion active users, and each (non-EU) Instagram user can conveniently login Threads just pressing a button. If they’re fudging the numbers, activating only 1.5% of their potential userbase seems odd. Why not activating hundreds of millions of accounts?
As for the posts, an average of 3.2 posts/users for just the first day sounds reasonable to me.
Meta has several billion active users across their platforms. 30M is nothing to them.
Also don’t forget that we’re talking about a microblog, so it will inherently generate a large amount of individual posts, much more so than e.g Instagram. The quality is however likely very low initially and a lot of users are probably just trying out the current talk of the day.
I do suspect that Threads will probably grow to a few hundred million users before the end of the year; anything less would probably be regarded as a colossal failure for Meta.
The barrier to entry is extremely low. If you have Instagram on your phone, you can just download the app and sign in using the same saved credentials, so you don’t even have to create a new account or type in your password.
Given that, and the very large pent-up demand for a decent alternative to Twitter, I’m not at all surprised it’s doing well.
My feeling also. I really doubt so many people were eager to create an account and engage on a totally new and untested platform that has nothing novel really.
I’ve only kept my Twitter because for some reason Britney Spears follows me. I would have gotten rid of it a long time ago before now. I have no interest in Threads. If people like it, great, it’s just not for me.
Hhaa, what do you post about?
I’ve not Tweeted in about 6 years, and have never Tweeted about her, or to her. I actually thought it would be a fake account when I saw “Britney Spears wants to follow you”, but to my genuine surprise it was actually her official account.
Tweet me baby, one more time.
Well tell Brittany where she can find you on the next platform! 😁
The former Prime Minister of my country follows me on twitter as well
Edit: also an actor from Scrubs, but not one of the main ones
It’s The Todd isn’t it?
It’s so strange when a recognised public figure follows you. Personally, I feel almost estranged from it - it’s not the kind of life I live so it’s bizarre that it happened (even though I doubt Britney would ever see any of my Tweets anyways, as she follows ~350,000 people).
If people like it, great, it’s just not for me.
I’ve gotta say, it’s very refreshing to see this attitude, since the main attitude I’ve seen here is “This is popular with normies who listen to bad music and like dumb celebrities, therefore it’s bad and terrible and I hate it!”
A few months ago, I moved myself onto a “live and let live” outlook on life. If people like things I don’t, good for them; I’m glad they can find enjoyment in what I can’t - it’s what keeps life interesting. I did once fall into the “x is better than y” and “popular = bad” pit, but using all your energy saying about how y is bad and x is good is just a waste of time when you could just be doing x instead and enjoying yourself.
See, this is why capitalism trends toward monopolies.
A small developer could create the exact same app down to the semicolon, but wouldn’t get even a quarter of the traffic on release.
But because it’s Meta (and somehow despite their awful record of privacy violations), the app gets over 30 million signups.
The internet is controlled by 4 companies and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Except it is nowhere near a monopoly in the social media space. There are so many general options, and specific forums for topics, etc. That’s not even to mention the fact that just because something doesn’t provide the exact same service doesn’t mean it’s not a competitor. In person communication, VoIP, etc are also competitors to social media.
You mean going out clubbing is praxis? 🍒
Unfortunately that is the power of marketing, an already established user base and a low barrier of entry. People who have Instagram accounts already have a Threads account, and people who have a Facebook account already have an Instagram account. It’s much easier to get them to try than it is to get people to sign up for any Fediverse instance.
I just hope that once it opens to the Fediverse, people who are already there can feel more comfortable to make the leap and drop Meta. Because Meta is not going to let the users drive the experience anyway.
Euro here, still no sign of any threads
With their privacy policies they probably can’t launch in Europe without getting fined into oblivion.
I’m sure they’ll come around to making it work with our laws. Too big a market to miss entirely
And that’s a good thing
I haven’t been following anything regarding Threads so I assumed it was out here in Europe too, it’s actually a relief that it isn’t. Won’t stay long like this, but it’s something.
Oh
You can download an apk and it will work
That’s assuming they are an Android user
That’s assuming they are an Android user
Like millions of others I went to check it out because the startup of a new social network is exciting.
It sucks. Mostly because of Instagram migration all of the spam and grift is there on day 1.
There’s also this fake “positivity” vibe that they’re trying to promote that is so fake and shallow with literally zero backup how would it be encouraged or grown despite “be positive” sort of sham messages.
Major disappointment. It literally does nothing new.
25 million spambots, 5 million users.
Or…
It is actually fairly popular. I’m sure there are more than a few bots, but a pretty huge chunk of people I actually know have been active on it.
Yeah that fake positivity came from Instagram. It’s like staring at an alternate reality.
As much as I dislike all the recent twitter changes, this gives Meta even more of a monopoly on social media networks
More than half of my personal follows on Twitter are enthusiastically jumping over. I don’t spend a lot of time on Twitter these days, so maybe I hadn’t realized it was bad enough to send people running happily into the arms of Meta.
It’s slowly breaking on a technical level. Not as fast as some people predicted, but it’s obvious to everyone now.
It’s not sign ups “activated profiles”. It’s people using their same insta account to use Threads.
That is literally how you sign up to use Threads, so I’m not sure this is a meaningful distinction.
The low barrier to entry was a very clever idea on their part.
It’s very much a distinction. It’s deceitful to claim there’s “millions of users who signed up/activated” It’s implying or coyly trying to say these are new accounts, especially to people who are on the outside and don’t know. Better to just say, “Millions went back to Instagram to activate their Threads account.”
Another article is claiming it’s up to 44 million…
"Instagram could be a primary driver of Threads’ adoption. This is due to a badge assigned underneath your Instagram profile picture with a number. This number denotes your user number on Threads. These are thought to be chronological, with Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg holding the coveted “1” badge.
Dexerto has observed that the user numbers have now surpassed 44 million at the time of writing, and it’s likely that as more regions find that the app has launched, this number will continue to rise."
Bots. Lots and lots of bots.
Whenever I hear Threads I can only think of this nightmare fuel
First it’s the number of sign ups, then it’s the posts and likes, then it’s the number of eyeballs grabbed and the ad revenue. This kind of metric chasing that these platforms encourage is one of the reasons why they become so toxic.
eternal corporate instanceof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law
B̷̞̆o̶͙̎t̴͓̀s̷̻͝ ̶͈̓f̶̟͛o̴̢͋r̷͉̆ ̵͇̕t̴̥̄ȟ̸͍ė̴̻ ̵̱̈B̶̝͘ò̸̠t̶̽ͅ ̷̧͑Ǧ̴͉o̴̦̎d̸̮͊
it’s millions of bot posts. and I’m sure Fuckerberg appreciates y’all spreading his pathetic PR for free and upvoting this shit
I don’t think it’s millions of bots, unless you are using that term derogatorily like some use “NPC.”
The media are pushing Threads with every fiber of their being. Tech-adjacent sites like TheVerge are absolutely unuseable right now because like 9/10 stories on their page are about how great Threads is and everyone should go to Threads and “hey, follow me on Threads.”
People need to acknowledge modern journalists/reporters/staff writers for what they are: influencers. That’s why they love Twitter. That’s why they love Threads. That’s why they demand corpo algorithms to boost their content and force it upon other people.
And that’s why they repeat a lie about the fediverse so insistently: that it is hard to get into. It is so hard to pick one of the top 2 largest sites and give them a username, password, and sometimes an email address. Journalists/writers generally don’t like Mastodon because it doesn’t force anything onto users. That means they have to organically earn a following.
But Meta will just give it to them by forcing users to see their posts.
I hardly believe anyone here will be jumping ship, after all if you’re here, you’re not looking for masses…
Eh, they serve pretty different niches. I joined it, and while it’s quite a lot of fun, it’s much worse for having more earnest and in-depth conversations. Reddit-style platforms really don’t have anything to worry about from it.
A lot of people aren’t for or against “the masses”, but rather there are specific people, communities and topics that they want to follow, and they may follow them wherever they thrive.
Personally I’m not too convinced by this idea that “Lemmy is better because there aren’t so many people in it”. I look forward for it and Mastodon to grow. I’d rather if Meta doesn’t get to be the main replacement for Twitter, but if there’s where all the people I want to follow go, then I guess I’ll have to go there too. At least the Fediverse integration might serve as a middle ground so people can follow Threads users without being beholden to Meta.
