- The app is very clean. Black text on white background. Only the bare minimum functionality – post threads, follow accounts, see a single (algorithmically curated) feed. Not flashy, no ads. Of course chances of it staying this way are close to zero.
- There is no "trending" section, which is surprising. You'd think that was one aspect of Twitter they would have copied first. Or maybe they are waiting to introduce it over the coming days once there are more users.
- They managed to pre-seed a ton of content from celebrities and other top Instagram accounts, so even on day 0 with a brand new account you start with a full feed and the place seems "alive".
- App is handling the incoming load like a champ. Everything loads with no perceptible lag, even though I'm sure it is getting hammered from every angle right now. This is where the backing of Meta engineering shines (over Twitter/Bluesky/Mastadon etc. which have all struggled to stay up lately).
- There isn't Fediverse support yet but your profile does show which server you belong to (right now threads.net by default), which is pretty neat.
A decentralized app still has servers. mastodon.social (which hosts the majority of the user base) was struggling with load and down as recently as 4 days ago (see https://status.mastodon.social).
mastodon.social does not represent the majority of users.
Any stability issues on mastodon.social are noteworthy, but it's important to recognize that it only represents 1,370,000/9,930,000 = 13% of total users, and 387,000/1,790,000 = 21% of Monthly active users.
If you don't use Mastodon, it might be easy to assume that the experience would be filled with blackouts or technical issues, but that's not true. If "picking a good server" sounds difficult, check out Mastodon's server page, and hopefully you should find one that fits your interest [3].
That’s a very sizable percentage of all of its users, so it’s a bit like saying that apple is technically not a majority, so it not being good at X is not a big deal.
Don’t get me wrong, I say that as someone who likes Mastodon and many of its ideas. My only gripe is a lack of focus on privacy - the fediverse makes everything overly public.
I've been using Mastodon recently, and I've really enjoyed my experience. I guess some big instances may have difficulty with scale, but I've really enjoyed my experience on a smaller instance.
It's interesting to me how dismissive people are of Mastodon, when it's basically been perfect for me.
I enjoyed Jeff Atwood's post on the matter [1].
> People say "decentralization doesn't work as good as the centralized facebooks and twitters", but then I post here on highly decentralized Mastodon a silly little joke about the commando character in the old video game Command & Conquer from 1995 and get a response from someone who worked on the original game! .. uh, maybe it is working already?
Mastodon doesn't need perfect scalability and uptime to be better than Threads. Instead, it succeeds by aligning the platform's values with the user's, by not treating the user as a product to monetize.
I don't believe it's shutting down? The website appears to be stable, and its users are donating $2,285/month to support it [1]. It seems both technically and financially stable to me. Let me know if I'm missing something though.
In addition to other responses, an instance shutting down has historically validated the concept of decentralization. Instance announces, people export, choose another instance, thank the old one for its service. I've seen this a couple of times now. Zero drama.
Does Mastodon need a PR person in each thread? I feel like I read a variation on this post every day on this site now. GP is literally just a comparison of Threads against existing, better known alternatives. Nothing deeper. What makes people so defensive about Mastodon?
It's because some people really like mastodon and there's a lot of, at best, odd arguments going around why it'll never work. Never mind that for a large amount of people it's already working.
Sure and I'd understand if the GP said something like "nobody is using Mastodon" but that's not what they said, they just drew a comparison between Threads and other social media.
The defensiveness is off-putting. Almost like a cult slogan. I'm glad folks are enjoying Mastodon, and there's obviously users on it! Threads claims plans to federate with Mastodon after all.
> Threads claims plans to federate with Mastodon after all.
Note that this is deeply worrying to a lot of Mastodon users. There's the fear that this is an embrace-extend-extinguish type move. Only time will tell.
Even if they do offer that, eventually they will remove it so they can show you want they want you to see like every other commercial social media site so they can make a few more cents. Why even bother signing up?
Wow what an insightful comment... I mean, I guess by that reasoning someday both Facebook and Instagram will remove their chronological timeline of only people you follow, maybe some day soon. I guess I'm surprised you didn't consider them to be part of your "every other social media site" given they're like among the largest in the world.
The reason TikTok is so popular is that they show you what you want to see. Being purposely annoying and showing you things you don't want is a specific issue of Facebook caused by letting too many PMs run wild, it's not actually a good business move.
The other reasons for it are:
- most users are not power users and don't follow a lot of people, but still want to see content
- a true chronological timeline would include bad posts (an acquaintance who spams or mass-RTs annoying content) and misses good ones (important life updates from your friends 12 hours ago)
This is also how Mastodon works but there is no algorithm. You can follow other people but then you see everything they post and, for me, much of it isn't interesting to me, so I'm only following a couple of people. Instead I follow hashtags. Twitter lets you search for hashtags but doesn't let you follow them, allowing them to show up in your feed. Hashtags ensure I'm only seeing posts that are related to my interests. So Mastodon gives you similar benefits to TikTok's algorithm but gives you full control of it. Eventually, TikTok will be seeking to make even more money and will change the algorithm to benefit itself more than the user. Any social media run by shareholders seeking profit will eventually enshitify this way, as we've already seen with almost all other shareholder controlled businesses.
AFAICT (just checked) it hasn't actually hit Android yet. Apparently iOS users got a jump on everyone else. I'm sure as soon as there's a web version my existing Facebook feed will be practically papered over with announcements.
I'm sure it will have a web version at some point relatively soon. But of course you want a native app for a Twitter clone, most people use it on their phone!
Smartphones are now the primary computing device for 70-90% of people depending on what demographics you look at. Smartphones shipped last year 1.2 billion, desktops 70 million. That's about the long and short of it.
Having worked in analytics at various tech companies including Fb, the reason is almost always just that app users have way higher usage rates and ad clickthrough rates. Of course if you know basic stats you will realize this is spurious correlation (social media addicts prefer apps, using an app doesn't make one a social media addict), but somehow management never cares.
I hate that computer has become a second tier citizen. My phone is a great little computing device, but my computer is an even better, large, comfortable, multitasking, ergonomic computing device.
Your phone offers the best opportunity to collect surveillance data, especially since you take it everywhere and provide a constant feed of your location.
That’s why even things with web or desktop UIs will try to goad you into installing the mobile app.
Look at the list of collected data for Threads in the iOS App Store. It’s basically “everything conceivable as much as possible.”
Phones are good at hiding your personal info from apps and your personal info is basically not valuable anyway. This is a conspiracy theory because the idea your data is worth something makes people feel good about themselves.
When Facebook ads are good, it's because people are paying to show the ad specifically to you. (Like when you put something in your cart on a web store, don't check out, and then ads follow you around everywhere telling you to go finish buying the thing.) That's not really demographics-based though, it's explicitly tracking you as a person.
Otherwise I'm not impressed. I don't try and hide myself from Facebook/Twitter much, but the first keeps trying to sell me Viagra and shirts for fat guys and the second thinks I'm every kind of doctor at the same time.
I've shrugged off a lot of mobile computing limitations because, well, if I wanted to do that I'd just use a computer. But it occurs to me that for a lot of people they don't actually have a regular computer now.
A new low-cost airline just launched in Australia. The only way to book? By installing their app...
I am not sure how the non-tech masses book their trips, but I usually have a dozen tabs open, comparing prices and flight times across a range of aggregators/airlines.
Even if I know which airlines I am flying I often have several tabs open to compare prices across dates.
>I am not sure how the non-tech masses book their trips,
By either calling (you have a phone in your hand, after all) the airline or their favorite travel agency, or using the application.
I know a guy who flies around frequently for both business and pleasure. The most he does is check Experia; usually he just books flights via the airline's application (made even easier because he's a frequent flyer).
>I hate this new trend with a passion.
20/20 hindsight says it was inevitable. Microsoft was too early and too innovative to the party with Windows 8, but otherwise they were right in judging that the desktop was on its way out from the front seat.
For the vast majority of people, a phone has more computer than they would know what to do with.
>> I am not sure how the non-tech masses book their trips
My non techie friends and family do everything on their phone. From my teenage nieces and nephews, to my 75 year old parents and in laws, they are far far far more comfortable on phone, which they feel they understand, than on a computer, which they feel is scary and mysterious and dangerous. (I'm not saying I agree with that ; that's just a perception we have groomed in them).
They do their banking and purchases and mortgages and trips on a teeny little screen, even teenier keyboard. And here's the thing, they're good at it. It works! Vast majority of time they accomplish what they want effectively and efficiently. Turns out I'm a massive exception. I just feel claustrophobic and enclosed and uncertain without my computer which is my comfort zone.
I have a friend in royal Bank of Canada and they have terminology for that - I forget the details but it's something like shoulders down vs shoulders up. They have detailed stats on what are peoples preferences in doing stuff on phone vs computer. Apparently in Canada people do vast majority on phone except in usa. Apparently that makes Canadians odd - they say Americans and a lot of world does their mortgages on phone too. I found that shocking until I realized my wife and sister do too
Not seeing an ad or sponsored posts every 2nd or 3rd story is refreshing, wondering how long that lasts
No web app to boot ? Wtf disappointed no web ui yet but hoping that changes and changes soon
Also no other way to login apart from instagram ? That’s strange , was hoping for standalone login , hoping it’s eventually rolled out
No way to change username even after linking instagram username, this is imho a dumb move, I was late to the instagram party and missed out on shorter username and now was hoping joining threads early would help me get my desired username but alas
I noticed the highlighted replies feature where celebrity replies are expanded below some threads , it’s probably a good feature just feel they could have a way of turning it off, I’d rather click into a story to surface those and maximize stories per page and reduce scrolling
All in all seems like a decent twitter clone, and lots of features missing but definitely a good start.
> No way to change username even after linking instagram username, this is imho a dumb move, I was late to the instagram party and missed out on shorter username and now was hoping joining threads early would help me get my desired username but alas
There is a 1:1 mapping of Instagram <-> Threads user names, so even if they let you change it in the app you wouldn't be able to get a shorter one if someone has already claimed it on Instagram.
On regular Instagram, I quit using because 20-25% of my feed was sponsored posts. (Although most of my friends only get ads every six or seven, I got ads every three or four posts.) I would imagine it won't be long before they start adding more ads.
My guess is it would be a disaster trying to launch while also shooting all the content onto Mastadon, which would probably cause some kind of DDOS. Probably a lot better to do it in a controlled manner in a couple weeks when they know what kind of load etc they're dealing with.
This is how you do a proper launch with very fast 'adoption' and an extremely smooth transition with little downtime. Obviously executed to perfection by no-one else but Meta Platforms. The one who's stock was once predicted right here to go to $0 because of its chaotic stock price drop, and is now celebrated with potentially finding another billion users out of Threads. It made no-sense to bet against Zuck like they did when the stock went down.
But this actually destroys the smaller social networks before they even had a chance to grow such as Substack Notes, Post, SPILL, T2, Mastodon, hive.social and cohost.org. They all need money to stay online and Meta has the money to sub-plant them all or buy out the largest networks. Money is power.
We'll see how this goes, but there is a pattern with Meta's photocopying machine which didn't kill Snap with Stories, and didn't kill TikTok with Reels. They will co-exist but there will be no immediate Twitter 'death' anytime soon, especially this year.
Just running the huge risk of getting broken up due to anti-trust and anti-competition laws by the regulators. (Unless they use ActivityPub as the argument that there is no lock-in on Threads)
But as always, Instagram's (Threads) success on ActivityPub is indeed a nightmare for the Fediverse as centralization come up on top.
Either way, a great move by Zuckerberg once again.
Many instances have promised a schism from Meta, and if they do, they will be a smaller, and much more enjoyable federation. Most people are gonna want Meta, is the general concensus, and I do not disagree. I want Mastodon how it was two months ago, it was great.
> We'll see how this goes, but there is a pattern with Meta's photocopying machine which didn't kill Snap with Stories, and didn't kill TikTok with Reels. They will co-exist but there will be no immediate Twitter 'death' anytime soon, especially this year.
Snap and TikTok weren't busy trying to kill themselves, though.
I’m giving it a chance. I just need the academics, security, tech, and finance folks to migrate over. I’ll start the virtuous cycle by using it so they see a viable alternative to Twitter.
I understand Meta isn’t amazing. I’m looking for Twitter from two years ago: somewhat moderated and working. They’ll give me that here.
Would like to see a way to login without having to create an instagram account. I used to have one but deleted it since I noticed it wasn't doing my mental health any good.
Similar situation here.
I have been avoiding Instagram for many years, but I will not create an account for that hell right now just to sniff in Threads.
> Anyone think this can become bigger than twitter!?
> It'll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn't nailed it. Hopefully we will.
Companies need to look at this launch and learn that you don't need idiotic wait lists and invite codes to generate hype for your service. The most important thing is to put it in the hands of users quickly and let them do their thing.
Facebook was highly exclusive when it first launched. That same company made Threads. I don't know if Facebook would have been as popular if it had not leveraged scarcity.
I don't get it, a big part of the opportunity here is that Twitter just shot itself in the foot by forcing everyone to log in. But I go to the Threads website and there is nothing there, just a link to an app. So I open the app and there's nothing there, just a login form. How does this help?
I haven't been able to post yet, it keeps failing. To be expected.
Not _super_ happy that the front page is pulling from people I don't care about but kind of expected. Curious how it'll adapt once people I want to follow start producing... threads?
There have already been about ten links on this page that essentially do nothing for me because I don't have an Instagram account. Not sure how this is supposed to replace the use of Twitter for people who want as much reach as possible for their posts.
I don’t care if the service is run by a billionaire or a 22 year old funded by billionaires or government grants, I just want to read little text snippets that people post.
Twitter has gotten worse lately, blue sky isn’t open to the public, and I don’t care about federation so threads seems pretty nice to me.
Among the many lessons for Elon to come out of this -
If you publicly announce that making an app is easy and could be done with a fraction of the engineers when you buy it, perhaps it’s unsurprising when a competitor decides that they should make the same app to take your revenue? After all, if it’s so easy to do, maybe it’s the next thing you should do.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 311 ms ] thread- The app is very clean. Black text on white background. Only the bare minimum functionality – post threads, follow accounts, see a single (algorithmically curated) feed. Not flashy, no ads. Of course chances of it staying this way are close to zero.
- There is no "trending" section, which is surprising. You'd think that was one aspect of Twitter they would have copied first. Or maybe they are waiting to introduce it over the coming days once there are more users.
- They managed to pre-seed a ton of content from celebrities and other top Instagram accounts, so even on day 0 with a brand new account you start with a full feed and the place seems "alive".
- App is handling the incoming load like a champ. Everything loads with no perceptible lag, even though I'm sure it is getting hammered from every angle right now. This is where the backing of Meta engineering shines (over Twitter/Bluesky/Mastadon etc. which have all struggled to stay up lately).
- There isn't Fediverse support yet but your profile does show which server you belong to (right now threads.net by default), which is pretty neat.
Any stability issues on mastodon.social are noteworthy, but it's important to recognize that it only represents 1,370,000/9,930,000 = 13% of total users, and 387,000/1,790,000 = 21% of Monthly active users.
If you don't use Mastodon, it might be easy to assume that the experience would be filled with blackouts or technical issues, but that's not true. If "picking a good server" sounds difficult, check out Mastodon's server page, and hopefully you should find one that fits your interest [3].
[1] https://fedidb.org/network/instance/mastodon.social
[2] https://fedidb.org/
[3] https://joinmastodon.org/servers
Don’t get me wrong, I say that as someone who likes Mastodon and many of its ideas. My only gripe is a lack of focus on privacy - the fediverse makes everything overly public.
https://www.threads.net/t/CuVlg88I84C/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ...
Deep pockets also help.
Seems like a cold start problem. I'd expect recommendations in general to improve soon.
It's interesting to me how dismissive people are of Mastodon, when it's basically been perfect for me.
I enjoyed Jeff Atwood's post on the matter [1].
> People say "decentralization doesn't work as good as the centralized facebooks and twitters", but then I post here on highly decentralized Mastodon a silly little joke about the commando character in the old video game Command & Conquer from 1995 and get a response from someone who worked on the original game! .. uh, maybe it is working already?
Mastodon doesn't need perfect scalability and uptime to be better than Threads. Instead, it succeeds by aligning the platform's values with the user's, by not treating the user as a product to monetize.
[1] https://infosec.exchange/@codinghorror/110656567413673113
[1] https://www.patreon.com/infosecexchange
I'm really curious as to what the current operating costs are.
The defensiveness is off-putting. Almost like a cult slogan. I'm glad folks are enjoying Mastodon, and there's obviously users on it! Threads claims plans to federate with Mastodon after all.
Note that this is deeply worrying to a lot of Mastodon users. There's the fear that this is an embrace-extend-extinguish type move. Only time will tell.
right now, seeing them both together makes me not wanna sign in again
The other reasons for it are:
- most users are not power users and don't follow a lot of people, but still want to see content
- a true chronological timeline would include bad posts (an acquaintance who spams or mass-RTs annoying content) and misses good ones (important life updates from your friends 12 hours ago)
[1] https://www.threads.net/download
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.instagram....
Rethread (retweet), thread (twitter) feed, etc.
Having a catchy name is among the most important steps to success.
I hate that computer has become a second tier citizen. My phone is a great little computing device, but my computer is an even better, large, comfortable, multitasking, ergonomic computing device.
That’s why even things with web or desktop UIs will try to goad you into installing the mobile app.
Look at the list of collected data for Threads in the iOS App Store. It’s basically “everything conceivable as much as possible.”
Your data isn’t valuable because your life is special and interesting. It’s valuable because it helps micro-target ads at you.
Otherwise I'm not impressed. I don't try and hide myself from Facebook/Twitter much, but the first keeps trying to sell me Viagra and shirts for fat guys and the second thinks I'm every kind of doctor at the same time.
A new low-cost airline just launched in Australia. The only way to book? By installing their app...
I am not sure how the non-tech masses book their trips, but I usually have a dozen tabs open, comparing prices and flight times across a range of aggregators/airlines.
Even if I know which airlines I am flying I often have several tabs open to compare prices across dates.
All of this is not possible with an app.
By either calling (you have a phone in your hand, after all) the airline or their favorite travel agency, or using the application.
I know a guy who flies around frequently for both business and pleasure. The most he does is check Experia; usually he just books flights via the airline's application (made even easier because he's a frequent flyer).
>I hate this new trend with a passion.
20/20 hindsight says it was inevitable. Microsoft was too early and too innovative to the party with Windows 8, but otherwise they were right in judging that the desktop was on its way out from the front seat.
For the vast majority of people, a phone has more computer than they would know what to do with.
My non techie friends and family do everything on their phone. From my teenage nieces and nephews, to my 75 year old parents and in laws, they are far far far more comfortable on phone, which they feel they understand, than on a computer, which they feel is scary and mysterious and dangerous. (I'm not saying I agree with that ; that's just a perception we have groomed in them).
They do their banking and purchases and mortgages and trips on a teeny little screen, even teenier keyboard. And here's the thing, they're good at it. It works! Vast majority of time they accomplish what they want effectively and efficiently. Turns out I'm a massive exception. I just feel claustrophobic and enclosed and uncertain without my computer which is my comfort zone.
I have a friend in royal Bank of Canada and they have terminology for that - I forget the details but it's something like shoulders down vs shoulders up. They have detailed stats on what are peoples preferences in doing stuff on phone vs computer. Apparently in Canada people do vast majority on phone except in usa. Apparently that makes Canadians odd - they say Americans and a lot of world does their mortgages on phone too. I found that shocking until I realized my wife and sister do too
[1] https://www.threads.net/t/CuVY5CAvfTS/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ...
Interface is clean and easy to use/intuitive
Not seeing an ad or sponsored posts every 2nd or 3rd story is refreshing, wondering how long that lasts
No web app to boot ? Wtf disappointed no web ui yet but hoping that changes and changes soon
Also no other way to login apart from instagram ? That’s strange , was hoping for standalone login , hoping it’s eventually rolled out
No way to change username even after linking instagram username, this is imho a dumb move, I was late to the instagram party and missed out on shorter username and now was hoping joining threads early would help me get my desired username but alas
I noticed the highlighted replies feature where celebrity replies are expanded below some threads , it’s probably a good feature just feel they could have a way of turning it off, I’d rather click into a story to surface those and maximize stories per page and reduce scrolling
All in all seems like a decent twitter clone, and lots of features missing but definitely a good start.
There is a 1:1 mapping of Instagram <-> Threads user names, so even if they let you change it in the app you wouldn't be able to get a shorter one if someone has already claimed it on Instagram.
I f'ing hate typing on my phone compared to on my computer. Definitely a necessary feature for me.
They also need to let us change display names; these usernames don't tell us very much. Also, a following-only feed would be great.
But the feed’s are loading slowly, I’d imagine that will be smoothed out though.
I can’t figure out how to follow or find fediverse accounts..? How does this work?
It doesn't (yet). Fediverse compatibility will launch "soon" (https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/05/adam-mosseri-says-metas-th...).
This is how you do a proper launch with very fast 'adoption' and an extremely smooth transition with little downtime. Obviously executed to perfection by no-one else but Meta Platforms. The one who's stock was once predicted right here to go to $0 because of its chaotic stock price drop, and is now celebrated with potentially finding another billion users out of Threads. It made no-sense to bet against Zuck like they did when the stock went down.
But this actually destroys the smaller social networks before they even had a chance to grow such as Substack Notes, Post, SPILL, T2, Mastodon, hive.social and cohost.org. They all need money to stay online and Meta has the money to sub-plant them all or buy out the largest networks. Money is power.
We'll see how this goes, but there is a pattern with Meta's photocopying machine which didn't kill Snap with Stories, and didn't kill TikTok with Reels. They will co-exist but there will be no immediate Twitter 'death' anytime soon, especially this year.
Just running the huge risk of getting broken up due to anti-trust and anti-competition laws by the regulators. (Unless they use ActivityPub as the argument that there is no lock-in on Threads)
But as always, Instagram's (Threads) success on ActivityPub is indeed a nightmare for the Fediverse as centralization come up on top.
Either way, a great move by Zuckerberg once again.
Snap and TikTok weren't busy trying to kill themselves, though.
I understand Meta isn’t amazing. I’m looking for Twitter from two years ago: somewhat moderated and working. They’ll give me that here.
https://www.threads.net/t/CuVZfoihkcF
Text follows for those without the app, RT from Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram (original tweet from Jesse Chen):
FYI for everyone, we’ve set our rate limits to “generous” bc we believe you have the right to see more than 600 posts in a day here.
if you encounter a rate limit block and you’re not a scraper, please let us know. thanks!
> Anyone think this can become bigger than twitter!?
> It'll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn't nailed it. Hopefully we will.
https://www.threads.net/t/CuVZQsrJRcr
Note they are rolling it out by country, maybe because they need per-language mod teams.
Majority of people use their phone for this, and that’s who they’re targeting.
Not _super_ happy that the front page is pulling from people I don't care about but kind of expected. Curious how it'll adapt once people I want to follow start producing... threads?
Twitter has gotten worse lately, blue sky isn’t open to the public, and I don’t care about federation so threads seems pretty nice to me.
If you publicly announce that making an app is easy and could be done with a fraction of the engineers when you buy it, perhaps it’s unsurprising when a competitor decides that they should make the same app to take your revenue? After all, if it’s so easy to do, maybe it’s the next thing you should do.