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Can I ask this ONE question?

How the heck did Zuckerberg completely MISS the utter total 100% importance of the user handle in trying to lift Twitter's user base from Musk?

Let me tell you this - Twitter users ARE their handles - handles matter.

But in Zuckerbergs's world, to join Threads, you have to get an Instagram account - and apart from all the handles already being gone there, you certainly can't get your Twitter handle on threads.

People love to get a good handle - it's a personalised number plate. So Threads should have played on this - people who are engaging, posting, building audience on Threads, well they get their choice of handle.

There should have been the biggest handle rush of all time - in return for usage and engagement. Instead - Threads got the opposite - no good handles available at all, disincentive to join. Ugh.

Why - why does Threads use Instagram for its user management system? That's a mistake that has to be fixed pronto.

If I was running that project I would have said you get to have the same Threads handle as your Twitter handle if you can prove you own it by posting a code to Twitter. Of course Musk would do his best to make that not possible, but playing that game is part of the publicity of getting people to move over. Coming up with encrypted codes, obfuscated codes to prove your identity. The newspapers would write about it, you could build talk about Threads, build the perception that there was a real movement towards Threads. But did facebook do anything like that? No, they just dumped you in the Instagram user account system and said "no good handle for you". Really, whoever it is at facebook running the Threads project lacks the imagination to be taking on the job of stealing Twitter from Musk.

> why does Threads use Instagram for its user management system

a) Because it allows most people to join instantly without having to signup.

b) It leverages your existing Instagram interests, connections etc. for the feed.

c) Enhances your Instagram advertising profile with additional data.

d) It means that Threads has a robust, scalable, secure and proven auth system.

That explains it exactly - technical reasons. That's why it's failing.

It's a fight with Musk, not development of a banking ledger system designed with UML.

Growing a social network to 100m MAU in such a short period is the opposite of failing.

And it's not just technical reasons but business ones. Feeding additional data into Instagram ads is going to improve the quality of their targeting engine. Which means Threads is contributing to Meta's bottom line without them having to run ads.

a) is not just technical - it's also about barrier to entry. A more user-friendly solution might have allowed custom handles. That's not the point. Meta want to gobble up other forms of personal data with Threads and retain its value through a link to an ostensibly real person on Instagram. They want you to stay in the bullshit garden and avoid the legwork of linking anonymised data to individuals.

> 100M monthly active users

> it's failing.

I'm sorry, what?

Armchair internet neckbeard thinks he knows Social Networks better than Zuck; who literally has half the world using his products... lol

They're obviously not advertising it due to the product being close to complete... it doesn't even have search or trending yet... Why waste money on advertising if the product isn't even done yet?

> Is the answer "absolutely everywhere", or is the answer "nowhere, never, none"?

What about the 2.3 billion Instagram users who get reminded about it every so often?

I've also never seen ads for Twitter, Facebook (before the scandals), MySpace, Reddit, etc. I think comparison to movies or Apple products is a false equivalence. Not a marketing expert, but for social media products it may be better to try to grow semi-organically?

I learned about the existence of The Peripheral TV show from a bus. I read the book a few years back and very much enjoyed it, and was surprised to see they'd made a TV show out of it - I thought there would have been other Gibson works ahead of it.

Great first season.

Cancelled.

Let me tell you about Vr.5 :-(

Imma check it out, I need more disappointment in my life...

What I imagined after reading this was everyone is so demoralized at Facebook, but perhaps specifically this team.

I'd have to ask colleagues that joined Meta, but I'm imagining a team that's totally checked out. You know, you like/need the $$$ you get biweekly, but your hearts not in it, so you show up everyday going through the motions and just keep pushing that boulder up the hill. Meta doesn't have the greatest reputation, and then on top of that your working on Mark Zuckerberg's spite social media project...

I don't watch movies and I block ads online. So help me out: were there many or few ads?

Before spending that much marketing money, maybe a good step would be to make Threads more available.

Right now, it seems to be blocked in half of the countries in the world. This probably affects the network effects.

I'm not even sure I'd have really heard about it if I hadn't been a Twitter/Fediverse user.

Bluesky is mentioned a gazillion times more, and even that not very often.

I deeply appreciate these hot takes based on nothing but ego. It saves me from having to go to Reddit.

One property in a list of other properties. It is all a balance of attention.