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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

I can’t see how threads can be “launched” without a desktop client.

That’s not even an MVP, it’s non existent.

Some of these supposed genius tech leaders are really showing themselves to have very questionable decision making capability.

It was also extremely off putting that it was so tightly linked to instagram.

They also made a mistake by not leveraging peoples desire to get their own Twitter handle on threads.

Failing also to launch is Europe.

Honestly it doesn’t seem that hard, if you weird the resources that Zuckerberg does. You say to them “clone Twitter”. It’s not like Twitter is the biggest technical challenge in the world to clone… why couldn’t Meta do that?

The outcome looks like what you’d expect - the Meta equivalent of a Musk Starship launch.

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Meta has a history of churning out MVPs and doubling down on what works. Launching with a desktop client, EU, etc are in direct opposition to a lean MVP. Meta definitely has some missteps but not sure this is one.

Tying in to Instagram was what made it resonate with such a large audience vs all the other Twitter clones. Carrying over the social graph was a wise decision imho.

The Starship analogy makes little sense as well. Starship is not an MVP and well on track to continue to push forward the state of the art of rocket engineering.

> Tying in to Instagram was what made it resonate with such a large audience

Resonate, or was simply them leveraging their current user base? I don’t think the use of an Instagram login and having your current contacts imported made it “resonate” with anyone. It was just a growth hack.

>> Tying in to Instagram was what made it resonate with such a large audience vs all the other Twitter clones.

This is false.

If your core target audience is people who use their phone for 99% of their computing/internet needs, why would a desktop client be part of your MVP?

Wasn't Instagram iPhone-only for a very long time?

Yes and their web presence only very recently allowed you to upload from your computer. It was half baked on the web for a very, very long time.

Also, WhatsApp and Instagram still don’t have an iPad app. Given the scale of their users and the company’s resources it is unfathomable to me that they haven’t tried to make their products more seamless experiences across the devices users use. But then I remember it is Meta and I would be hard pressed to think of a more user-hostile company.

>They also made a mistake by not leveraging peoples desire to get their own Twitter handle on threads.

Not sure this outweighs people's desire to actually obtain the handle they've always wanted but was already taken on Twitter, which is a substantial reason to sign up for any new platform at this point. Either way both of these groups were ignored by not allowing custom handles in the first place.

They launched their MVP 3 weeks ago and scaled to 100M users on the first weekend. That is a world first. Maybe give them a bit to get the house in order before demanding features?

All the features you've mentioned are on the roadmap, as they've outlined many times. Software at this scale is non-trivial.

Adam Mosseri mentioned their intentions to get an MVP going. It actually runs smoothly and iterating quickly. Web version probably coming in few weeks.

It's already surpassed Mastodon and Bluesky easily.

and there's no conspiracy theorists on there.. like qanon or white nationalists. https://www.axios.com/2022/10/30/elon-musk-paul-pelosi-tweet...

There's plenty of alt-right and right wing accounts that are attacking LGBTQIA+ folks and making it unsafe on threads.

Due to the nature of things being linked to Instagram it is making it easier for people to hate on transgender folks and I've seen it first hand multiple times. Reporting also leads to no action on certain "large" accounts.

Saying there no white nationalists on Threads is false.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/09/meta-thre...

For those of us in the LGBTQIA+ community Threads is simply not safe.

They probably use react or a similar framework, so building it would require hundreds, if not thousands, of people working on it for years.

They're doing it incrementally.

Hey.. don’t diss SpaceX. Even their exploding rockets are leagues ahead of anything Meta scratches of the bottom of their barrel.

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