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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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2yr ago

Brendan Jones

@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.

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2yr ago

Chris Messina

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@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.

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2yr ago

Ryan Kawailani Ozawa

Bytemarks Cafe #416: Venomous Creatures

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.

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2yr ago

Ryan Hoover

Product Hunt

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.

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2yr ago

Lyondhür Picciarelli

@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)

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2yr ago

Vikram Aditya

DaoLens

@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!

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2yr ago

Chris Messina

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@vikramaditya94 I wonder what their methodology was. That's an insane number!

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2yr ago

Vikram Aditya

DaoLens

@chrismessina It is ana insane number. I'll find it and get back to you!