Is Threads winning the war with X?
cjr.org
cjr.org
It’s beyond asinine and suggests some serious hubris.
Odd. I am in Europe and it’s clearly accessible.
Same thing with remittance apps like Transferwise or Remitly that was focused on a strategic market.
Twitter has been Twitter forever, and Meta never decided to compete with it directly. Until now.
I don’t think anyone interesting is actually on threads. It seems to be a graveyard with only Instagram influencers posting boring influencer stuff.
It depends on who you think is interesting, since some communities are a better match for Elon's X. My experience is that my Threads feed is already more interesting than my X feed.
Is there a way to get Mastodon linked news?
However, there is currently no easy way to read bsky posts without an account. Although this is now a priority for bsky devs.
I use Twitter to follow several hyper specialized communities where the info is world class.
Threads was kinda entertaining stuff but felt low signal.
I’m not a huge instagram user though and that is way bigger than Twitter. If Meta builds instagram/tiktok for text it might be much worse for the sort of submissions HN finds interesting but also see more overall uptake.
I noticed Threads still massively outranks twitter in App Store ratings.
* Ukraine War coverage (less since Elon took over, he downranked it)
* Coronavirus: you can find a lot of scientists discussing new studies
* Business info/marketing etc: useful for company owners
Haven't found any of these on Threads yet. Threads actually blocks coronavirus searches and redirects to the CDC. So you can't easily find people you would follow on twitter.
There's a reason threadreader exists. Because Twitter just sucks at conveying anything more than "look what I just had for dinner". By design no less.
The fifth most-recently posted thing on Threads is 77 days old.
On “X” it was a few hours ago.
FWIW, the experience is completely different than it was during the gold rush. Even the algorithmic feed is surprisingly good once you mute a few morons.
And the main reason for that is very simple; if there's an interesting new story, discussion, discovery, etc, it's still almost certainly going to be found on Twitter/X first. Or maybe Reddit, Discord, YouTube, etc.
I've never seen such stories start out on Threads or other Twitter replacements. I've never learnt about a TV show, film, video game, web project, podcast, site, etc for the first time from a Threads post. The majority of official communications from government agencies and media outlets still end up on Twitter/X first, while the majority of indie/fan project related ones usually end up on something like Discord first.
If Threads wants to win, it needs to be the place where these announcements are made. The place where people go first to learn about things, not just where they're reposted a few days later.
It also needs to fix discovery a bit too. Twitter/X is already awful for discovery, but there is at least somewhat of a possibility I'll find a new creator who's work hasn't already gone viral. Or normal people to chat with who aren't celebrities in general.
Threads feels like it lacks that. It's better now sure, but 99% of the posts I see are from folks that already have thousands or followers or more, and usually from folks that are far more attractive than the norm to boot. The most interesting people are often not models or Instagram celebs, but it's the latter who get suggested to everyone on Threads.
I still see plenty of X threads shared, though.
(Disclaimer: I’m on neither platform. I used to be on Twitter prior to Tweetbot getting the axe, but not since then. Never signed up for Threads.)
Sounds good to me. Funny how news folks complains both when social media shares their content and when it doesnt.
The hard reality is that news have become a cesspit of divisive toxicity. Hope threads - not that i would use it - keeps news out.
Edit: Oh god ive opened the app and it’s full of pro palestine news (my comment is not about the topic itself but the presence of a huge number of news about it) mixed with random junk. Why have I done this.
If Twitter and Facebook paid them billions of dollars (for what?), the news folks wouldn't care if they post links to news.
it seems to be full of engagement bait, and generally satisfies my need to scroll through a feed of random stuff for a little while, but as far as any actual useful content it's pretty light.
I follow some accounts on both Twitter and Mastodon (as a backup in case the account leaves Twitter or is blocked) so such a client would need some smarts to de-duplicate posts that other people are cross-posting.
Does betteridge apply? Yes... yes it does.
On Twitter, I personally observed an inverse relationship between my happiness and follower count. The more people that followed me, the less I enjoyed my time on twitter.
Besides, there's plenty of other reasons to not use website other than disliking the owner "for some weird reason".
And the obligatory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...