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Comment by nprateem | Hacker News Reader

For a community of entrepreneurs who understand iteration to find product-market fit, the comments here are very shortsighted. I'm pretty sure they won't age well.

No competitor could ask for a better time to launch with Twitter and Reddit users disaffected.

FB have the experience, reach, resources and timing to win here. Their biggest problems will be other well-funded attempts, but I can't think of any other blue-chips with the same experience or initial advantages (eg social userbase) to bootstrap with.

I'll be buying some FB shares later.

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> For a community of entrepreneurs who understand iteration to find product-market fit, the comments here are very shortsighted.

I don't get the response either. But I've def seen HN folks react without any sort of logic to things so maybe this is one of those times...?

> No competitor could ask for a better time to launch with Twitter and Reddit users disaffected.

I immediately noticed it's branded with Instagram and not Facebook which I think is smart. Insta is seen as "for old people" by the gen Z crowd (that's a direct quote from a friend's kid) but not nearly as old as the FB crowd. I suspect that the disaffected Reddit crowd and the Twitter users more likely fit this demographic.

With that said, my god I would be so happy if something overtook Twitter. As much as I'm not a fan of Meta, Twitter is on the bottom of my list.

I have little faith. FB degenerated year after year, in a blazing arc of self-destruction that almost everyone understood was going to kill the app. Yet these user-hostile changes were continually justified internally as 'increasing views and clicks', which must have required an unbelievable degree of institutional obtuseness.

I can already see similarities in Threads, and it's only just begun:

1. Threads is app-only, there is no desktop version.

2. Your feed is populated by algorithmically sourced content, not just the posts of the accounts you follow.

3. You can't delete threads without deleting the Instagram account it's coupled with.

I would also argue:

4. You can't make a threads account without signing up to Instagram.

All four are attempts to increase company metrics, but which are clearly user-hostile, and will ultimately backfire. I actually find (1) to be inexplicably stupid.

Agree, Twitter is a sinking ship and Meta is there to gain users.

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