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.
