Meta's new Threads, a rival for X, is now Apple's most downloaded app | Hacker News Reader

Meta's new Threads, a rival for X, is now Apple's most downloaded app

businessinsider.com

28 pointsMilnerRoute30 comments

I have a feeling the biggest blunder Musk made isn't verbal gaffes, but renaming Twitter to X. He basically gave business away to Meta on silver platter.

Absolutely this. One of the dumbest things he’s ever done.

Which is even funnier when you know he tried to rename PayPal to X before and got fired over this abysmal idea.

For anyone who wants to know more: https://mashable.com/article/musk-x-twitter-paypal

He also tried to replace everything unix-like with MS Windows. Somehow that must have seemed really important when trying to make a startup survive the dot com boom-and-bust cycle.

Which is odd, really; you’d think that X11 would have appealed to his terrible names fetish.

Oh. Though, actually this was probably the ActiveX era (DirectX is largely the only remaining evidence of it today, but MS went though an irritating “everything should end in X” phase in the late 90s).

Xbox - prototype name for ActiveX game box.

Xbox Series X.

Like, how many X can you cram into a name?

WindowsX ;)

Twitter had such a strong and recognizable brand too. Working in payments under the X name or something like that might have made sense, but what a god awful idea to kill core app branding.

Agreed, but that said, he can call it what he wants -- the rest of us still call it Twitter.

Yes, that was the last straw

What is Meta? Are you talking about Facebook? They must have changed their name...

I'm sick and tired of getting notifications about Threads when I'm on Instagram.

The notifications are very hard and sometimes impossible to turn off. I like Instagram, but I couldn't care less about Threads. Being forced to get these notifications constantly gives me a strong urge to nuke my profiles on both apps.

It’s especially frustrating because it shows parts of comments, but if you want to read the whole thing, it takes you to the download page for Threads, and won’t show you the comment.

It’s because they just launched Europe.

Yep, that's what TFA says.

Why tho

I mean, really. Who is on there? What’s the incentive to switch to threads? I understand going to a federated mastodon instance, but this?

Nothing involving the words “federated mastodon instance” is ever going to reach #1 on the App Store.

Most peeps I know already have the insta account, so while the incentive to switch isn't very high, the friction to do so is very low.

I would imagine all those millions of non-tech people in their middle age that use fb on a daily basis.

> I mean, really. Who is on there?

141 million people and 33 million DAU in less than 6 months.

So basically already about 15 times more than Mastodon, which was released 7 years ago.

Are they actually posting anything?

Great point! No, is the answer. There hasn’t been a single post yet. X is the only place where people post.

That's still an apples-to-oranges comparison since Facebook made it trivial to onboard to from in the Instagram app and made sure that lots of mainstream celebrities (and more importantly, advertisers) were posting there from the beginning.

Not really - They are both selling apples (i.e. a similar product) but one has a competitive advantage (i.e. ease of onboarding, advertiser revenue and content from celebrities). The the product is still mostly the same while the go-to-market strategy has been different.

It's more like an apples-to-apples comparison, but one company is selling apples in a small market stall and the other is Walmart.

Why "switch"? It's not like we are limited to only one social network :V

I use it because I actually get engagement on it, and it’s always positive. When I post something, I can expect feedback. When I reply to a post, I can expect to have a pleasant conversation. None of this has ever happened on Twitter. I can @ industry experts and get a reply for help, I am surrounded by people who post about interesting things and who are interested in the things I talk about. Sure every now and then there’s some negative or off putting content, that’s always gonna happen in a system like this, but I can easily just mute and move on.

I’m primarily on Mastodon, but occasionally look at Threads and Bluesky. You’re allowed use more than one, you know.

(I don’t see myself using Threads or Bluesky heavily unless and until there is good third party client support).

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