Is ‘Threads’ a “Twitter-killer”?

[hurtinbuckaroo]

Meta has introduced their Twitter-like app ‘Threads’, and signed up 10 million people in the first 7 hours. If you’re already using instagram, you can sign up with a few clicks with the same username and automatically follow the same people. That gives Meta easy access to over 2 billion people.

I haven’t joined, and I’m wondering if anyone here has tried it out. And do you think it can put a stake in Musk’s heart?

 

[rousseau]

Mastodon is also a serious competitor to Twitter, and slowly siphoning off it's users. That along with this app isn't good news for Twitter, but then Musk himself wasn't good news for Twitter.

At this point Twitter is already living off of it's historical strength, many of it's most popular users have no incentive to leave yet because they have a large following. So in theory you can still consume on the platform, and personally I'm still doing this.

I haven't tried Threads, and likely won't. I can't imagine myself signing up for another Facebook product. Mastodon, on the other hand, is a genuinely great platform.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I think Twitter exists solely due to inertia as a good "news" media service. It is a good way to make announcements and share news quickly. As far as "social" media, it is deader than an Egyptian Pharaoh. It is a place where important or popular people post information and then other users start barking and howling.

If Threads is a "risk" to Twitter, it is that it might provide a "social" media angle for Instagram, which is already very popular. But as far as news and announcements, I don't see Threads being much of a threat, its integration into Instagram holds it back in that sense. The greater threat to Twitter appears to be Elon Musk and his alleged computer "genius" being exposed as being quite mediocre. He can't solve the Bot problem and his solution to trying to get a cut in scraped data was to limit his customers' access.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

It looks like Reddit is screwing the pooch also. There is a new social network, the Fediverse, that is not centralized and cannot be wrecked by billionaire bozo owners. There is Lemmy, an aggregator that allows one to easily access your favorite Fediverse sites. The idea is to prevent large social media owning companies from wrecking something for whatever reason. And to value privacy.

 

[rousseau]

Apparently when you sign up for Threads as an adjunct to your Instagram account, you can only delete Threads if you also delete your IG account. This is the type of thing that will make me never, ever, in a million years sign up for another Facebook product.

 

[Politesse]

It looks like Reddit is screwing the pooch also

Bafflingly.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Meanwhile, some Truth Social is facing serious legal and financial woes. Everything Trump touches.....

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

Mastodon is also a serious competitor to Twitter, and slowly siphoning off it's users. That along with this app isn't good news for Twitter, but then Musk himself wasn't good news for Twitter.

At this point Twitter is already living off of it's historical strength, many of it's most popular users have no incentive to leave yet because they have a large following. So in theory you can still consume on the platform, and personally I'm still doing this.

I haven't tried Threads, and likely won't. I can't imagine myself signing up for another Facebook product. Mastodon, on the other hand, is a genuinely great platform.

Unfortunately, Threads eclipsed the number of Mastodon users within a few hours. As of this morning, it was at 30 million, while Mastodon hasn’t reached 10 million, and the number of active users is actually falling. I think they’ve missed their chance.

 

[rousseau]

Mastodon is also a serious competitor to Twitter, and slowly siphoning off it's users. That along with this app isn't good news for Twitter, but then Musk himself wasn't good news for Twitter.

At this point Twitter is already living off of it's historical strength, many of it's most popular users have no incentive to leave yet because they have a large following. So in theory you can still consume on the platform, and personally I'm still doing this.

I haven't tried Threads, and likely won't. I can't imagine myself signing up for another Facebook product. Mastodon, on the other hand, is a genuinely great platform.

Unfortunately, Threads eclipsed the number of Mastodon users within a few hours. As of this morning, it was at 30 million, while Mastodon hasn’t reached 10 million, and the number of active users is actually falling. I think they’ve missed their chance.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Mastodon is a not-for-profit, nobody actively using it wants it to be another Facebook or Twitter, they want it to continue to be a user-friendly app that's not driven by a profit motive.

I wouldn't expect Mastodon to compete with Threads in terms of sheer numbers, because Facebook is piggy-backing off of it's own user base, which is massive. Mastodon, on the other hand, has 10 million users with essentially no deliberate marketing. That's quite the achievement.

I'd expect Threads to see an influx of bored users who like laying on their couch clicking buttons, but whether or not it's actually successful is another thing entirely.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Mastodon is also a serious competitor to Twitter, and slowly siphoning off it's users. That along with this app isn't good news for Twitter, but then Musk himself wasn't good news for Twitter.

At this point Twitter is already living off of it's historical strength, many of it's most popular users have no incentive to leave yet because they have a large following. So in theory you can still consume on the platform, and personally I'm still doing this.

I haven't tried Threads, and likely won't. I can't imagine myself signing up for another Facebook product. Mastodon, on the other hand, is a genuinely great platform.

Unfortunately, Threads eclipsed the number of Mastodon users within a few hours. As of this morning, it was at 30 million, while Mastodon hasn’t reached 10 million, and the number of active users is actually falling. I think they’ve missed their chance.

I think the entire short post model of media is broken for social posting, so these all seem doomed. Musk's only shot at Twitter is to create something new, from scratch. Which really seems kind of dumb after paying $44 billion for effectively the company name and servers.

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

Mastodon is also a serious competitor to Twitter, and slowly siphoning off it's users. That along with this app isn't good news for Twitter, but then Musk himself wasn't good news for Twitter.

At this point Twitter is already living off of it's historical strength, many of it's most popular users have no incentive to leave yet because they have a large following. So in theory you can still consume on the platform, and personally I'm still doing this.

I haven't tried Threads, and likely won't. I can't imagine myself signing up for another Facebook product. Mastodon, on the other hand, is a genuinely great platform.

Unfortunately, Threads eclipsed the number of Mastodon users within a few hours. As of this morning, it was at 30 million, while Mastodon hasn’t reached 10 million, and the number of active users is actually falling. I think they’ve missed their chance.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Mastodon is a not-for-profit, nobody actively using it wants it to be another Facebook or Twitter, they want it to continue to be a user-friendly app that's not driven by a profit motive.

I wouldn't expect Mastodon to compete with Threads in terms of sheer numbers, because Facebook is piggy-backing off of it's own user base, which is massive. Mastodon, on the other hand, has 10 million users with essentially no deliberate marketing. That's quite the achievement.

I'd expect Threads to see an influx of bored users who like laying on their couch clicking buttons, but whether or not it's actually successful is another thing entirely.

I would think the drop in active users would be a bad thing. And while it may be friendly in terms of subjecting users to ads and siphoning their data, one of the drawbacks cited most often is its lack of a user-friendly interface.

 

[rousseau]

Mastodon is also a serious competitor to Twitter, and slowly siphoning off it's users. That along with this app isn't good news for Twitter, but then Musk himself wasn't good news for Twitter.

At this point Twitter is already living off of it's historical strength, many of it's most popular users have no incentive to leave yet because they have a large following. So in theory you can still consume on the platform, and personally I'm still doing this.

I haven't tried Threads, and likely won't. I can't imagine myself signing up for another Facebook product. Mastodon, on the other hand, is a genuinely great platform.

Unfortunately, Threads eclipsed the number of Mastodon users within a few hours. As of this morning, it was at 30 million, while Mastodon hasn’t reached 10 million, and the number of active users is actually falling. I think they’ve missed their chance.

I think the entire short post model of media is broken for social posting, so these all seem doomed. Musk's only shot at Twitter is to create something new, from scratch. Which really seems kind of dumb after paying $44 billion for effectively the company name and servers.

Mastodon is also a serious competitor to Twitter, and slowly siphoning off it's users. That along with this app isn't good news for Twitter, but then Musk himself wasn't good news for Twitter.

At this point Twitter is already living off of it's historical strength, many of it's most popular users have no incentive to leave yet because they have a large following. So in theory you can still consume on the platform, and personally I'm still doing this.

I haven't tried Threads, and likely won't. I can't imagine myself signing up for another Facebook product. Mastodon, on the other hand, is a genuinely great platform.

Unfortunately, Threads eclipsed the number of Mastodon users within a few hours. As of this morning, it was at 30 million, while Mastodon hasn’t reached 10 million, and the number of active users is actually falling. I think they’ve missed their chance.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Mastodon is a not-for-profit, nobody actively using it wants it to be another Facebook or Twitter, they want it to continue to be a user-friendly app that's not driven by a profit motive.

I wouldn't expect Mastodon to compete with Threads in terms of sheer numbers, because Facebook is piggy-backing off of it's own user base, which is massive. Mastodon, on the other hand, has 10 million users with essentially no deliberate marketing. That's quite the achievement.

I'd expect Threads to see an influx of bored users who like laying on their couch clicking buttons, but whether or not it's actually successful is another thing entirely.

I would think the drop in active users would be a bad thing. And while it may be friendly in terms of subjecting users to ads and siphoning their data, one of the drawbacks cited most often is its lack of a user-friendly interface.

You can't judge Mastodon by the same metrics as you would the others, as it's a not-for-profit. It'll have fewer users yes, but if those users make up a thriving, healthy environment, then the overall platform is a success.

I've been using it for a couple months now and have no issues with the interface. It's the most I've enjoyed any social media platform, ever.

But it's definitely more of an intellectual environment, which makes it restrictive for those who just want to shit-post.

 

[rousseau]

Here's a case-in-point that I just took from a post on the platform:

Curious if the media misunderstanding the point of Mastodon will ever end? We’re 8-9 months since the beginning of the bigger migration waves and I’m still constantly seeing “will mastodon ever succeed? Why is mastodon failing?”

We’re watching the media, in real time, have zero idea how to evaluate something unrelated to capitalism. Have we lost all ability to measure something without a quarterly report?

I want to start to organize these and make an effort to refute. Using something like #MisunderstandingMastodon is way too long and sounds like trying to make fetch happen but I like it.

Mastodon is what you get when you design a platform for people, not profit. The hellhole of Twitter is what you get when you do the opposite. But we're so used to framing social media in terms of 'who's winning', that all we're looking at is number of users and market share.

In a lot of ways Mastodon is analogous to IIDB. Far smaller than it's competitors, but the quality of discourse is much more enjoyable, and the platform is better designed.

Does having 100 million users who are just there to dunk on each other or draw attention to themselves make a platform better?

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

Here's a case-in-point that I just took from a post on the platform:

Curious if the media misunderstanding the point of Mastodon will ever end? We’re 8-9 months since the beginning of the bigger migration waves and I’m still constantly seeing “will mastodon ever succeed? Why is mastodon failing?”

We’re watching the media, in real time, have zero idea how to evaluate something unrelated to capitalism. Have we lost all ability to measure something without a quarterly report?

I want to start to organize these and make an effort to refute. Using something like #MisunderstandingMastodon is way too long and sounds like trying to make fetch happen but I like it.

Mastodon is what you get when you design a platform for people, not profit. The hellhole of Twitter is what you get when you do the opposite. But we're so used to framing social media in terms of 'who's winning', that all we're looking at is number of users and market share.

In a lot of ways Mastodon is analogous to IIDB. Far smaller than it's competitors, but the quality of discourse is much more enjoyable, and the platform is better designed.

Does having 100 million users who are just there to dunk on each other or draw attention to themselves make a platform better?

If you’re going to argue that Mastodon is slowly siphoning off Twitter’s users and isn’t good news for Twitter, what’s the basis for your argument, if not user stats? And given the size disparity and the difference in “quality of discourse “, how would either have any significant effect on the other?

 

[rousseau]

Here's a case-in-point that I just took from a post on the platform:

Curious if the media misunderstanding the point of Mastodon will ever end? We’re 8-9 months since the beginning of the bigger migration waves and I’m still constantly seeing “will mastodon ever succeed? Why is mastodon failing?”

We’re watching the media, in real time, have zero idea how to evaluate something unrelated to capitalism. Have we lost all ability to measure something without a quarterly report?

I want to start to organize these and make an effort to refute. Using something like #MisunderstandingMastodon is way too long and sounds like trying to make fetch happen but I like it.

Mastodon is what you get when you design a platform for people, not profit. The hellhole of Twitter is what you get when you do the opposite. But we're so used to framing social media in terms of 'who's winning', that all we're looking at is number of users and market share.

In a lot of ways Mastodon is analogous to IIDB. Far smaller than it's competitors, but the quality of discourse is much more enjoyable, and the platform is better designed.

Does having 100 million users who are just there to dunk on each other or draw attention to themselves make a platform better?

If you’re going to argue that Mastodon is slowly siphoning off Twitter’s users and isn’t good news for Twitter, what’s the basis for your argument, if not user stats? And given the size disparity and the difference in “quality of discourse “, how would either have any significant effect on the other?

Well your first post compared the user-base for Threads and Mastodon, which is an apples and oranges comparison. That's largely what I was responding to here.

But Musk did cause 2 million users to open a Mastodon account in a matter of weeks. I'm not going to claim that Mastodon is going to be the death-knell of Twitter, for a number of reasons, but if I was Musk I definitely wouldn't be ignoring that (as he wasn't when the migrations were happening).

A google search claims that Twitter has quite a few more active users than I originally thought, although the Mastodon effect could be larger than it appears as it may be many of Twitter's most sophisticated users leaving. And a higher proportion of it's genuine user base. I'd also be interested to know how many engaged users Twitter has. To me Twitter seems, like Facebook, to have become a floating corpse that people check because they have an account and nothing better to do.

I doubt Twitter is going anywhere for the time-being, because many of it's users still have an incentive to post there. But it's most definitely on the decline.

 

[Toni]

I follow a small handful of accounts on Twitter who all seem to be setting up accounts on Post or Mastadon or both, and waiting to see which proves to be THE right choice. I’ve set up a post acct. and if my favorites migrate to Mastadon, I probably will set up an acct. there as well.

How did I see it put? Twitter has proven that it can be a force for social change, and fir ordinary people to potentially connect with people actually in a position to make decisions. Ordinary people can have real
influence ( potentially.) The big players/powers do not want things disrupted. They want to maintain the status quo. Hence Musk and now Zuckerberg running or attempting to run the narrative by controlling the platform. Oh, and by the way, profiting from your personal information gleaned from your participation in these platforms.

Personally, I post almost nothing—perhaps a quick response to something but rarely even that. I’m not out to make a name fir myself, to gather followers or turn a buck.

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

although the Mastodon effect could be larger than it appears as it may be many of Twitter's most sophisticated users leaving. And a higher proportion of it's genuine user base.

Agreed. Mastodon could be "punching above its weight" if the migration is top-heavy with people having a large following.

 

[James Brown]

How does Mastodon make the money to keep the lights on?

 

[rousseau]

How does Mastodon make the money to keep the lights on?

It's decentralized across thousands of instances, so you don't have one central owner, you have many managing their own instance. I don't know the platform very well yet, but my understanding is that each instance relies on grassroots funds from it's members and owner. Given that, occasionally you'll see technical issues that you wouldn't normally see in a place like Facebook.

The interface itself seems to be centered around hashtags. You can follow hashtags that anyone, on any instance is using, but you're much more limited in your view into instances that you don't belong to. This protects people who want to be left alone from harassment. The only way you can be discovered and followed is by using a hashtag, or your post being 'boosted' by someone else. Twitter, on the other hand, has a universal search across all of it's tweets, so if you post about something anyone on the platform can theoretically respond.

Basically, a lot of the design decisions on Mastodon were made to empower and protect users, not maximize engagement. For some this can feel limiting, but I personally I have no problem with it at all. I've been following a number of hashtags, and the content I'm finding is far more interesting than on any other platform.

 

[Ruth Harris]

I’ve set up a post acct....

Personally, I post almost nothing—perhaps a quick response to something but rarely even that. I’m not out to make a name fir myself, to gather followers or turn a buck.

I decided to sign up on Post too. My username is RuthH1937. Look me up if you desire. I only have a few posts there but I comment regularly on other posts. The reason I decided to go with Post is that I am a news junkie, and they fill that need nicely.

I looked at Mastodon but I was a little bewildered by the signup options like choosing an instance. I am not sure how I am supposed to know which one will suit me the best. I also don't like the idea that it is so limiting on interactions between instances.

Ruth