Honestly this is what I think everyone has wanted for a while. It's a stripped down version of Twitter from years ago without any of the nonsense and ads, and a straightforward ui/ux. And it already has your profile information from Instagram and everyone you already follow and/or friends with so there is little to no setup required which makes the onboarding essentially one or two taps.
edit:
and yes I know the irony of "no ads or nonsense" (yet), but as a way of getting people to join (in the near term) its a pro.
What makes you think they aren't going to put ads in shortly? They are most likely trying to entice people to sign-up and will, once they get to a critical mass of engaged users, add them in.
I don't know if ice cream is the best metaphor. You obtain the ice cream, you eat the ice cream, you excrete the ice cream. End of saga. But social media is something you invest time and information in. You build a reputation, you form relationships with others, yada yada. You don't just stop eating the ice cream like you haven't made any commitment.
... you lick the ice cream for a few minutes every day while your friends watch from a distance, the ice cream company monitors your behaviour and creates a profile of you.
As sores and other health issues appear you remind yourself that the ice cream still delivers some good things, and your friends will only spend time with you if you all eat the same ice cream.
The last decade has taught us to expect enshittification and we can only be left to wonder how quickly they'll execute on that process. How terrible can they make the product, without you leaving, is the min/max profitability optimization.
>And I assume you’ll have a similar monetization model? There will eventually be ads in there as well?
>If we are successful, if we make something that lots of people love and keep using, we will, I’m sure, monetize it. And I would be confident that the business model will be ads.
There are no stupid questions but, really? Subsidize it and then, bam! another instagram? They'll have to add photos and videos, right? Are they going to canibalize ig too?
Bet money they'll integrate it to ig in a couple years.
Twitter's revenue is pretty small compared to Meta's. In order for Meta to actually value the revenue generated they'll want active users to reach what Twitter had at it's peak. That's not going to be this year. And the app will have to be fantastic from a user experience point of view for awhile to grow enough to get there.
So yea, duh, Meta will monetize it. But it'll be an app hellbent on growing while being subsidized by Meta until then.
I wonder how much this will cannibalize Instagram's engagement-share and thus eat away at Instagram's margins due to lack of ads. By going to Threads, I feel like I've sort of checked off that "I've visited Instagram" desire in my brain.
"I know they are only doing this for right now to get me roped in, but it's sure nice to not have to look at ads"
is frankly quite disturbing.
A bit like celebrating when the guy who does all the whipping gets a new whip which is currently softer than the old one, so the whippings aren't quite so bad for a while.
The technology really doesn't matter that much, it's the network where the real value is.
And I don't see how the Twitter network overlaps with the Instagram network. Instagram is more of a celebrity network, while Twitter an industry network.
Exactly. For some reason I have this irrational dislike for the Meta universe. I made a choice early on to not join Facebook and since then it has been a like personal rule for me. But I am bad at keeping myself accountable since I use Whatsapp to communicate with my immediate family.
I don't think that's irrational at all. I joined in April 2004, shortly after it was first open to some colleges, and at that time it was great. For the next few years at least, it was a pretty positive place, without all the "engagement hacks" and ads and junk.
I joined Instagram as soon as it was available on Android (2012 I think), and loved it. By that point, Facebook was starting to get a little icky, and I really liked that it was just photos, all positive stuff, and always reverse-chronological.
Then Zuck got his dirty hands on Instagram, and it of course started getting icky in many of the same ways Instagram did. I quit Facebook in 2018, and Instagram not long after, and haven't really looked back. I still would occasionally sign into my FB account for event invitations, but seems like most of my friend group doesn't use FB for that anymore, so that's mostly gone.
Everything Meta touches turns into garbage. It's all about emotional manipulation and getting people worked up about something or other. Your take on Meta/FB from the beginning turned out to be prescient, I think.
well, it's instagram. this'll probably get lots of facebook users to make an instagram account now though, to have an account on threads. under the meta umbrella. every time i put on my quest 2, i get bored before the updates are downloaded. walkabout is the best thing about meta. maybe it'll be the savior.
Agree, seems like a terrible decision. Twitter took off in part because people could post and have a wide audience. That audience is greatly reduced if there are no casuals allowed.
I am pretty sure the released product represents an extreme rush to market, and an incomplete representation of their intentions for it.
Reason: Meta has been having NDA'd meetings with admins of the larger Mastodon instances, and it's no secret that they intended to have this on the Fedi, which is also not in the current release. My assumption is that the NDA meetings were to promise fiscal help for instance admins who will necessarily get a huge flood of new traffic when Meta brings their tsunami of Intsadiocy to the Fedi infranet; my guess is it will be an amount of money that gives them a fair amount of discretion and which is pretty big to them, but pretty small to Meta. A means of getting the bigger "players" to let them execute their strategy, even knowing full well their intention to follow the Embrace with the formulaic Extend and Extinguish.
Most actual founders who actually know tech things also accept this deal when they get bought out. No reason not to think they'll bite, and most of them did, or at least, they went to the meetings and then started doing syrupy posts about "fair play" and "they get to have a chance," cause clearly the techbros have not yet had a chance to fully implement their genius plan that's totally gonna work guys.
And the whole "we love the openness" thing, I believe that as much as I believe Microsoft love Linux.
Not that Elon isn't their primary target, though why they're bothering I don't know, he's basically sitting in the middle of Main Street, covered in gasoline and holding a lighter screaming for attention. He's gonna get sent somewhere soon. Possibly space, who knows. But has really hung his ass waaaaaay out there the last week or two and I think they couldn't resist the urge to fuck it now rather than later.
Other reason I think they rushed is, the Fediverse as it was a couple weeks ago made their feelings pretty clear about federating with Meta, and I'm pretty sure they have been paying attention (not like the Fedi is private after all). Someone in the structure recognized that if they really do hope to execute the Embrace move, this is not the safe moment to do it.
Which means that the intense month of ActivityPub/Mastodon focused dev they've been doing has been premature, but they couldn't predict the last two weeks a month ago, so they're pivoting the product on the fly to a Twitter-grab posture.
My guess is that the people who were working on AP support are now either developing the WebUI for Threads, or else the implementation to allow people to view Threads through the Insta site, with a lightning fast rollout coming by end of next week.
They will still roll out to Mastodon as well, but I'm pretty sure from what I saw on the Fedi that they have come to understand that this is not the unsuspecting populace that they afflicted with Cambridge Analytica; this is a small subset of that population that learned the lesson thereof. If they hope to have anything to do with it, one thing is certain, they need to move slow.
huh ... i went to sign up and try it out but was confused why I couldn't find a way to do it from https://threads.net. I'm not interested in something that is just a mobile app rather than a general messaging platform.
Do they actually expect professionals (journalists, academics, etc etc) to all go use this on their phones? Oh well ....
I swear they must have. There is no way Zuck would launch this without at least reaching out to see where their heads were at. They must believe in their product and its branding more than a thick pile of cash.
Even the web reader view of this thread is horrifyingly janky for me on iOS safari; each tap seems to be a full, slow refresh of the site and loading screen.
I wonder how soon Meta moderation policies will kill this platform.
Elon of course abuse his power to ban those he dislike and to ban trackers of his plane (and to help some dictator war criminals while he at it), but Facebook / Instagram censorship and bans are pretty random, harsh and irreversible.
Platform by Meta likely mean that good chunk of Twitter audience is not allowed to use it: some journalists reporting on war crimes, OSint, anything related to porn and gambling, sex workers, etc. Twitter is full of shit, but at least I have a choice to look at whatever I want without corporate nanny censoring world for me.
If there's one thing I think we've learned from Twitter, it's that for most people, none of that actually matters.
De-platform folks on the alt-right?
Twitter lives on.
De-platform folks on the left, re-platform folks on the alt-right?
Twitter still lives on (though with far fewer advertisers).
Ban journalists and then invite them back? Journalists: "Please sir, may I have some more?"
It seems only folks who are chronically online actually talk about any of this, and only a vanishing few actually care enough to do anything about it.
That said...
> but at least I have a choice to look at whatever I want without corporate nanny censoring world for me.
Yeah, I don't know which Twitter you've been visiting, but this is just flat out not correct. Twitter is absolutely censored. Maybe it's censored in a way you like, but let's not pretend it's some sort of free speech free-for-all.
I dont pretend that Twitter is not censored, but Facebook censorship is far more intrusive, random and puritanic. This is not about some political views, but I just practically dont see how platform like this can succeed.
After all Instagram and Twitter have really different audiences for a reason.
Again though if you want a fresh account based on a specific area of interest to work from, Meta will not let you. They need your real name your real phone number and have the all profile details for your phone (Android permission). Nope.
On twitter I have a handle and it follows other 3D XR accounts and thats all I am interested in. It's social but its within a specific professional context.
I still have no idea why Meta will not let you keep separate identities. It might have been prevailing wisdom when Facebook and LinkedIn got started but it is anachronistic now in the 2020s
Hard pass. No longer doomscrolling and chasing adrenaline fixes on social media has improved my quality of life immeasurably. Obviously to each their own, but I've given up looking for a non-toxic social media platform.
Agreed 100%. I see a future where there are two types of people: politicized, divided, depressed, 24/7 like chasing addicts living bubbles with fried attention spans, and the new ruling class.
Why 5M people would voluntarily put themselves in group 1 is beyond my comprehension.
Yeah, it's chocked full of CORS violations. If you turn off tracking protection it loads, but you aren't missing anything, it's just the word "Threads" a basic webgl animation and a QR code to install an app.
Yup, the main link (Zuck's message) just shows me a threads icon and nothing else in Firefox. The threads.net top level page doesn't show anything at all. I don't see how this is supposed to be a Twitter killer when it doesn't even load!
I think you have to turn off Enhanced Tracking Protection (and the Firefox Container extension, if you have that) so that it can load data from the other Meta domains.
Doesn't work for me on mobile. I'd assumed it was a uBlock Origin or other privacy protection problem. (When I saw this was some Meta thing I lost interest in figuring out why it didn't load in that browser.)
At this rate, in its first 24 hours Threads will probably accumulate more user accounts than Mastodon has in its 7 year history. (~13.2M at the moment: https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount)
Not implemented yet. https://help.instagram.com/169559812696339 Also some of the larger Mastodon instances have said that they will not federate with Threads, although the largest mastodon.social will.
given that threads.net still links to a blank landing page, i'd guess that it's not so much a performance issue as the web version not being launched yet
NYT's Hard Fork podcast did an interview with the one of the key people working on Threads. If you were curious about the official Meta position on all your concerns and want answers to questions you have, that's the one to listen to.
"Meta is waiting for more guidance around the Digital Markets Act, new EU competition rules that govern how large online platforms use their market power, a person familiar with the matter said, "
DMA is about large companies and not the tiny mastodon instances.
> Your app exclusively uses your company’s own account setup and sign-in systems.
I have less than zero interest in zuck-twitter but as far as I know it requires an insta login at the moment, which seems to fall under this exception.
> Apps that use a third-party or social login service (such as Facebook Login, Google Sign-In, Sign in with Twitter, Sign In with LinkedIn, Login with Amazon, or WeChat Login) to set up or authenticate the user’s primary account with the app must also offer Sign in with Apple as an equivalent option.
One could argue that Instagram logins come under social networks AND "own company login."
I'm not a lawyer, certainly, but my understanding is that exceptions trump the rules they are exceptions to. In particular I'm fairly certain that the gmail app (for example) does not allow "Sign in with Apple" even though it (obviously) offers google sign-in. I expect facebook apps to be the same, although I certainly won't be installing any to find out.
I am very much enjoying the ui, and feel like twitter is killing it's network effect while this is doing the opposite for now. This won't be the end of twitter, not globally. Some say Pepsi was the best thing to ever happen to Coca-cola.
Instagram already does the annoying, user-hostile things (e.g., trying to force users to log in while browsing) that Twitter started doing even long before Musk's acquisition.
Do we really want to leapfrog fresh startups on the enshittification treadmill and jump straight to Meta-level dark patterns? And tie one more identity into that huge tech giant?
edit: and yes I know the irony of "no ads or nonsense" (yet), but as a way of getting people to join (in the near term) its a pro.