> I have no fucking idea what the Meta name change was about.
Forget about the metaverse, it seems like it was a good change to me, just to not be named Facebook.
I can tell Meta has a much more positive association in my mind than Facebook (the company). Probably because I associate it with Instagram as strongly as I do with Facebook, and "insta" is still considered kinda cool.
People are having fun on Threads, and somehow zuck seems to be considered cool there. I never would have expected it. I see Instagram mentioned there, I see zuck mentioned there, sometimes I see Meta mentioned there, and I don't know if I've ever seen Facebook mentioned there.
The branding seems to have allowed Threads to have mostly its own branding with strong association with Instagram given the slick onboarding and graph copying, and no real association with Facebook.
That's the goal. This way headlines will read "meta/alphabet fined $X million for selling user data to cartels/illuminati" and nobody will know WTF this is about because they'd need to read the article to learn it's the parent company of Facebook/Google.
Meta is a nameless holding company that stands for nothing. Facebook is a dieing platform that GenX & boomers may still use. At least they seem to have the clue that hitching your company name to a dead platform is a bad business strategy.
It's not growing but I would not say it's dying. People are definitely sti using it and they are making profits. Many young people at least have an account, and many are caught up in the web of Messenger.
Well technically Google still exists; it’s a subsidiary of Alphabet, and people who work at Google are employed by “Google LLC” (and not Alphabet). (In fact I think I remember there was some training that explicitly told us to NOT say that we were employees of Alphabet.)
Such a bizarre decision too. This is the best chance Meta had to eat Twitter's lunch and obviously the branding is going to make-or-break that. With the massive +EV potential that represents, and the value provided by owning a .com (as demonstrated by the amount of confusion from people going to threads.com), does it not seem obviously worth it to negotiate extensively with Threads.com for them to rebrand and sell them the .com? It's not going to get cheaper for them if Threads does indeed eat Twitter's lunch.
On the other hand, it's common sense for a photography-and-video oriented social media site to support tablets, and yet there's still no iPad Instagram app! (Although there is a minimal browser version.) From that perspective it would not surprise me if they end up staying app-only, as weird as that seems.
I mean, at Meta's scale it seems hard to know. Expectations are through the roof.
A better number would be that they were able to push 1 in 40 of Meta's users and 1 in 10 of Instagram's users into the app signup in 5 days of national press coverage. I have no idea what typical uptake of a feature is in Instagram. Nor do I know how many people signed up and checked it out vs. became actual active users.
I also am not sure if 100 million users is even anything to be excited about at Meta's scale. Google seems to kill projects that have that many MAU for lack of executive support.
The DAU drop off is going to be (already is?) monstrous. Not sure if that’s a metric that matters because I don’t care, but people have already stopped using Threads in large numbers.
It means the record-breaking sign-up boom has tapered off, and user behavior is evolving from "hello world" mania to more normal usage patterns.
> Between July 6 and July 12, figures provided to TechCrunch from Data.ai indicate that Threads had more than 880,000 downloads globally on iOS alone, having had “few downloads” prior to this point.
It also means that Meta calling their Twitter-killer "Threads" is the best thing that could've happened to threads.com, which was (at best) not thriving.
Looks like meta might have to change the name if the other threads owns the trademark, that or pay for the name. That clearly this is proof the two products are getting confused by would-be users.
> For: Downloadable computer application software for mobile phones, namely, software for providing access to information, advice, food and exercise databases and calculation tools including a interval timer, covering the field of diet, weight loss, diet planning and lifestyle wellness, and intermittent fasting
Lol, I wonder if they had a generic dieting app ready to go so they could jump on any new brand name that they could grab the 'downloadable software' mark for.
Thanks! I later found their application, but thought it was refused (due to confusion with other "Threads" for some kind of threat analysis software). Seems like it was finally granted after amending.
They also took the "Meta" trademark from an existing augmented reality company. I believe that company decided to sue facebook. I think facebook probably just doesn't care and will just settle any possible lawsuits or something.
People wanting to download a Twitter clone and downloading a Slack clone by mistake. Both with a bland generic name. Describes the state of tech pretty well right now.
And it wasn't only in the US either, lots of big French companies were called Compagnie générale de X since the 1800s. Many modern behemoths such as Veolia, Transdev, Vivendi, Vinci trace their origins to such companies (sometimes the same - Compagnie générale des eaux was massive at some point).
I think this actually had to with the specific legal framework some of those banks were chartered under.
"National banks" were established under a specific charter type, which included the authority to issue paper currency under certain Federally-sanctioned conditions, so a lot of them took names that focused on them being National Banks. Thus, you got a lot of First National Bank of Pacoima, Second National of Pacoima, Merchants National, Totally Not A Scam National, etc.
Even though that ended in the 1930s, the precedent for a lot of "First" and "National" names has persisted.
Absolutely love that naming convention. It’s so vague and specific at the same time. Like someone’s asked them what they do and they’ve just waved their hands vaguely and said, ‘oh stuff, you know, with electricity, that sort of thing’.
The best is General Magic, whoever thought of that should’ve taken the rest of the week off.
I’m guessing they’ve given brands that advertise on FB and IG various promotions if they post to Threads to create the illusion that someone is actually using it.
Plus NSFW content is banned and moderation is much heavier handed than Twitter. This seems like a ploy to get people addicted to the algorithm but in 'Threads' fashion. Twitter may have an advantage if people perceive it to be a more 'realistic' portrayal.
A lot of people use instagram where NSFW content is banned. Most people wouldn’t post or look at NSFW content online if it was related back to their IRL selves. There’s certainly a big niche for a “more wholesome web”. While I think it’s goofy to expect the entire web to operate like this, I kind of like that I won’t be inundated with porn, videos of people getting killed/maimed, etc. when I’m scrolling on some social media apps.
I’m the complete opposite. Obviously no one enjoys spam, but I want real human content. YouTube comments are even more useless now as it’s all just happy happy joy joy from the algorithm.
I definitively get videos of people getting killed/maimed on my instagram feed despite using the "not interested" option every time they show me this stuff.
Yea It took some time before I had it available in the PlayStore here in Canada after the release, but the app from this article had updated their description saying they are not related to META Threads.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 146 ms ] threadI have no fucking idea what the Meta name change was about.
Lack of regulation leads to a giant megacorp buying up corporations to grow even bigger.
They used to call it trust busting.
Forget about the metaverse, it seems like it was a good change to me, just to not be named Facebook.
I can tell Meta has a much more positive association in my mind than Facebook (the company). Probably because I associate it with Instagram as strongly as I do with Facebook, and "insta" is still considered kinda cool.
People are having fun on Threads, and somehow zuck seems to be considered cool there. I never would have expected it. I see Instagram mentioned there, I see zuck mentioned there, sometimes I see Meta mentioned there, and I don't know if I've ever seen Facebook mentioned there.
The branding seems to have allowed Threads to have mostly its own branding with strong association with Instagram given the slick onboarding and graph copying, and no real association with Facebook.
It's scary when you open Instagram and it says "from Facebook" but meh when it says "from Meta."
Same as reading "business X acquired by Facebook" versus "acquired by Meta."
It's a form of reputation separation. Same thing Google did with Alphabet.
E.g. when people trust WhatsApp, and then see it's from Meta, they may trust Meta more too
"What even is Meta?"
"It's... meta"
It tickles my dad funny bone, but not sure it will throw anti-trust regulators off the scent.
The company “Facebook” no longer exists, though.
Therefore to frustrate the marketing efforts of both you should call them Facebook and Alphabet (even when actually referring to the current Google).
badump tsss
On the other hand, it's common sense for a photography-and-video oriented social media site to support tablets, and yet there's still no iPad Instagram app! (Although there is a minimal browser version.) From that perspective it would not surprise me if they end up staying app-only, as weird as that seems.
A better number would be that they were able to push 1 in 40 of Meta's users and 1 in 10 of Instagram's users into the app signup in 5 days of national press coverage. I have no idea what typical uptake of a feature is in Instagram. Nor do I know how many people signed up and checked it out vs. became actual active users.
I also am not sure if 100 million users is even anything to be excited about at Meta's scale. Google seems to kill projects that have that many MAU for lack of executive support.
https://youtu.be/Ardk5agFomY
> Between July 6 and July 12, figures provided to TechCrunch from Data.ai indicate that Threads had more than 880,000 downloads globally on iOS alone, having had “few downloads” prior to this point.
It also means that Meta calling their Twitter-killer "Threads" is the best thing that could've happened to threads.com, which was (at best) not thriving.
According to Delaware filing, this "Next Computer Inc." was incorporated 12/14/2020.
Lol, I wonder if they had a generic dieting app ready to go so they could jump on any new brand name that they could grab the 'downloadable software' mark for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unregistered_trademark
Less so now, the past it seemed like it was almost all local banks.
"National banks" were established under a specific charter type, which included the authority to issue paper currency under certain Federally-sanctioned conditions, so a lot of them took names that focused on them being National Banks. Thus, you got a lot of First National Bank of Pacoima, Second National of Pacoima, Merchants National, Totally Not A Scam National, etc.
Even though that ended in the 1930s, the precedent for a lot of "First" and "National" names has persisted.
The best is General Magic, whoever thought of that should’ve taken the rest of the week off.
There may be -no- official IG Threads app in the AppStore when curious minds go searching.
They say something like "this is similar to slack, not a social network", but it still seemed like a plausible description of the FB Threads.
They should be more explicit: "THIS IS NOT FACEBOOK/INSTAGRAM THREADS".
The sudden popularity of clubhouse.com overshadowed clubhouse.io forcing the latter to rename to shortcut.com.
https://www.shortcut.com/blog/clubhouses-name-is-now-shortcu...
Now their name and logo are similar to apples shortcuts.app and news.app