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Threads — Share ideas & trends with text
Threads is the platform where communities unite to discuss current interests and upcoming trends. Connect with favorite creators and like-minded individuals to explore shared passions, and share your thoughts, ideas, and creativity.
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Chris Messina
Top Hunter
Hunter
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The fact that "keep your username" is the value prop Instagram is leading with in the App Store gallery implies to brands and influencers that Threads isn't about creating a NEW social graph, but leveraging the one that people have spent years developing.
That's a huge advantage over every other Twitter competitor that's launched recently.
Don't forget: Facebook grew by leveraging people's contacts and spamming them, a technique that is no longer allowed. Thus Meta is leveraging the sunk-cost of their monopolistic network to grow into an adjacent space using an asset no one else can: the Instagram graph.
Whether Threads succeeds or no doesn't matter; what matters is whether it's compelling enough to cause brands and influencers to gradually starve off their Twitter posting long enough to take the bird site down for good.
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@chrismessina maybe leveraging your existing social graph is useful to some, but I use microblogging to hear from people I don’t know in real life — the exact opposite to how I use Instagram. The kind of brands I want to follow with microblogging I don’t follow on Instagram. And the influencers? Well , they’re making video content on Instagram. Why would I follow them on a microblogging service? So there’s possibly a small benefit from the existing social graph, but it’s no killer app.
In any case, the abuse of personal data by this app is going to be so bad that they’re not even launching in the EU. Think on that. No thanks, won’t be touching this with a ten foot pole.
Mastodon doesn’t have any of the personal data harvesting and the community is fantastic, that’s the place to be.
@brendanjones well, we'll see. Twitter is wounded and Mastodon seems too hard for normies to use, which is who Threads is presumably targeted at.
I understand your use case; we'll have to see how following works to know if imports your existing IG graph or just heavily relies on it for recommendations.
I'm curious to see how this plays out.
I'm a little skeptical that mirroring the Instagram graph is the right move though. Speaking for myself, I follow friends and visual storytellers (broadly defined) on IG but those accounts aren't necessarily the best at short form written word.
But it's very possible that bootstrapping off this graph will pull creators into the platform that already have a large following and that IG presents a more algorithmic feed not entirely driven by who you follow to surface the best stuff.
@rrhoover not necessarily anything impairing such creators to turn their copy on and add it to their production.
Divergently, I think the use case for these is going to be more directly aimed engagement and boosting community content (as leverage, not source)
@rrhoover I agree with this PoV. There is a study on how many people ignore captions on Instagram, and the number was less than 3%. I wish I had saved that link!
@vikramaditya94 I wonder what their methodology was. That's an insane number!
I have a good feeling about this alternative, I've tried Bluesky, T2, Mastodon, not a huge fan of any of them but Threads looks like it has potential, mainly because it looks the most similar to Twitter, I guess.
Also FYI for anyone here, this is now available for pre-order with an expected launch on July 6th
This looks like an incredible example of how a product can be re-skinned and stripped down to focus on one alternative core element.
Personally, I wanted something new, not something like so so, or Instagram-ish for example, hence honestly am sticking to twitter for now!
Not much seems to be known about some of the finer details of Threads (I guess we'll find out Thursday) but it seems like most of them are moot because the biggest win is that Instagram users instantly have people to follow and be followed by.
I remember when Twitter started recommending people to follow when a new account was created and some people become overnight Twitter royalty. Ellen, Obama, Jimmy Fallon, of course but also smaller accounts. I checked against recently and that that list is now populated with Musk, SpaceX, Tesla. By instantly giving users a useful feed of people they already follow, they're bootstrapping the best possible experience. Great product launch.
Interesting approach to pull usernames/social graphs from Instagram. while I may try Threads, my instagram account is dedicated to my hobby – aviation – and thus not a good starting point for a new social network.
Just reading the level of data they need to make this app to been able to work is very concerning. But it’s Facebook 🙃 they don’t know how to do things responsibly.
Can’t wait to see what horrors against humanity they pull this time.
So far, Mastodon has fast and beautiful third party apps, no ads, no algorithm and no influencers. That’s pretty nice actually.
But I guess this is nice is you already are on Instagram. It will make it easy to switch to Fediverse alternatives in the future.
I'm interested to see how this will work out. I don't have Instagram and I don't really want to 'get it' either but I do want to see what this is like and whether it's social like Facebook or more open like Twitter. I'm also not sure if people will really use it all that much.
Either way, if I was Elon I'd be kind of worried, especially as this has the added bonus of being propped up by Instagram rather than being largely sperate from FB / IG.
I'm on Twitter since 2010, I've been a very passive user until very recently (mostly using it as an RSS feed) and now be more active since a few months. Curious to see if a real competitor can enter the market.
@mosseri and @chrismessina, congrats on developing Threads! Could you share some insights into how the algorithm will prioritize content in users' feeds? I'm curious about its personalization.
@ricardo_luz I'm the hunter, not the maker. If I were to guess, I'd assume an algorithm tuned closer to TikTok-style interests than Facebook-style close ties.
Facebook still exists after all, and this is specifically going after brands who feel jilted by Twitter.
@chrismessina I wrote a blog about it as I was covering the leaks from the starting of the app. I would love to have your review on my coverage: https://jaskaransaini.com/instag...
@chrismessina looking back at history of instagram, they had the best logos. They could have done better
@jaskaransainiz1 that's not very specific. The @ symbol is a direct swipe at Twitter. Even if it's not creative, it makes its point. Furthermore, the brand needs to be secondary to Instagram, which is ostensibly the parent brand.
This has huge potential to become the next big thing. Congratulations on the launch! 🚀
One potential drawback could be the moderation quality, as ensuring appropriate, respectful conversation in such an open platform can be challenging. A stronger mechanism for filtering content or reporting misuse could further improve user experience. Let me know if you think the same.
Yes, being excited for Threads from Meta because Twitter is dying is a perfect "frying pan into the fire" situation, but seriously, screw Elon. People dismissing Threads as "another Twitter clone" are missing the point. It's not the app, its UI, or functionality that will make a difference. It's that it comes with a full social graph for Instagram users. No "find me over there." You'll already be connected. I'm excited.
Interesting to see the community upvoting something they have not seen yet..
