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Comment by pityJuke | Hacker News Reader

A concrete mixed bag.

I am no longer experiencing brand slop [0]. For following tech news, it's pretty good - the Verge and their journalists in particular seem to live on the app, and I had no issue following the OpenAI debacle on it.

I can see the NBA side of Threads is growing, and Woj in particular is apparently moving over his weekly AMAs to Threads.

Activity is fairly strong. The viewcounts are lower than Twitter, but I don't trust Twitters' viewcounts at all [2]. Either way, Threads is almost certainly the small fish in Twitter's pond.

Threads users still aren't funny, though [1].

But hey, beats being on Twitter.

[0]: https://internettalk.substack.com/p/i-am-drowning-in-mutes-p...

[1]: https://www.threads.net/@crumbler/post/C0wyTzMPl6v

[2]: https://sea.mashable.com/tech/26293/no-tucker-carlsons-trump...

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Yeah, it seems like their "slow burn" strategy is seeing dividends in a very deliberate way. I don't know that we'll ever get a "tipping point", and I know that the platform will never be "good", but it definitely seems like it will have its fair share of the social media pie sooner, rather than later. The NBA stuff is interesting because I was thinking that as soon as threads could market itself as valuable to sports (my thought was the NFL), then they would be in a great position to siphon that remaining traffic away from twitter.

Feels, to me, like in two years twitter will feel more like 4chan (pretty close now), threads will feel more like a disneyland/facebook/corporate version of dorsey twitter, and mastadon will go on feeling like the yahoo-era tumblr until the next major upset.

I'm really hoping that federated solutions come up with something so compelling that everyone just switches over, but I feel like we're past that point with this latest social media shakeup.

I'm a huge NFL fan, and Threads has already replaced X for NFL (and MLS) news for me. My team's beat writers have all already moved over to Threads.

Excellent! It is really important to make sure you only consume approved media delivered via approved channels!

It's NFL news, so yes that would be the right way to do it, unless there is some sort of neural implant that would telepathically beam the same coverage.

There must be a million billion services for NFL news already. I find it amusing how (mainly nontechnical) society changes its communication platforms like their underwear. Current Thing gets boring, Next Thing comes, jump on supposed hype train, wait X years, repeat. Of course you can kinda program this process with ads. It's so... banal.

Oh, nice! Thanks for the data! I don't follow any of it, myself (can't even use threads), so it's nice to have a little confirmation on that!

Like I said, I've kind of thought this was the trend. Threads made pretty clear that they were going to be deferential to brands, and I'm betting that Facebook has more than enough money to fete itself to the NFL's whims in a far more compelling way than Twitter can. I'm very curious to see what comes of all of this in the spring, when the NFL can really reconsider its partnerships. They don't often switch things up mid-stream, but they seem to ALWAYS switch things up, post season, to whoever's going to pay them the most/give them the best deal. "Official X of the NFL" is not what I would call a "rare" designation.

So if Threads can put together a compelling set of numbers (actual experience on the app aside, the numbers they have are still pretty impressive; that's usually not enough to convince a human being, but it's usually plenty enough to sign a contract), they could get a one-two punch of pulling in the biggest sports talk and then attracting all other sports talk.

But, of course, that's top-down thinking. The same result could come about of very different circumstances, given proper engagement from the NBA demographic. So it'll be interesting to see if March brings about a full fledged NFL push, or a hard promotion of March Madness. (or, you know, maybe nothing; threads has been moving at a glacial pace and I'm way out ahead of any thing they've indicated even thinking about)

> threads has been moving at a glacial pace and I'm way out ahead of any thing they've indicated even thinking about

I'm not so certain that's an accurate statement. Threads launched only 5 months ago, and they've made some fairly large progress on things users have requested the most, and there's a number of things that are currently being tested in certain parts of the world (ex: trends).

It'll be interesting to see if they can continue that pace into the new year.

Personally, I just want to see a lists and bookmarks feature, which they've confirmed is in the works.

Eh, I'm willing to give them every inch of their due, and I'm immune to sophomoric or superficial complaints about the platform that would make it seem like it's failing in any way, but I really must insist that the pace is still pretty slow.

Now, I'll grant you that they are tending their own garden and putting in to place the things they want to put into place, at the cautious and respectful pace of a much more sensible company. But even taking your example of 'bookmarks', that's a REALLY simplistic feature. Be prepared for at least some snide eyebrows, if not snide remarks from this commentariat, about the idea that five months after launch, you still don't have a bookmark feature. Again, I'm not throwing any particular shade. Just noting that the pace of progress is well slower than modern companies/apps have accustomed us to expecting.

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