Instagram Threads triples downloads in December, reaching top; X falls to #36 | Hacker News Reader

Instagram Threads triples downloads in December, reaching top; X falls to #36

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84 pointshn198685 comments

Twitter isn't focused on being a microblogging platform anymore, and X has a branding problem worse than that papa John's guy, John Schnatter.

I like mastodon, but it has been described as going to a quiet restaurant only to be handed a meat cleaver and an oven.

Bluesky's interface is clunky, slow by comparison. It is run by Jack Dorsey who, bless his good intentions, doesn't inspire faith in his management of a good product.

Meta is hands off, this is Instagram and Mosseri's discretion, with Meta as a hiring pool. The hate for meta is palpable, but threads is only going to grow imo.

Agree with a lot of this but Dorsey doesn't run Bluesky. The project was initiated at Twitter while he was CEO and he's on the board of the company, but he's not the day to day operator.

Which I would also suggest is the most questionable/concerning part of Bluesky: Twitter didn't invest in it in exchange for nothing.

What amount of control might X/Elon have over Bluesky as a company? Jack backing something other than Bluesky post-Twitter is not a good sign.

My understanding is that Jack Dorsey has little to no direct involvement with Blue Sky anymore. He doesn't even have an account on the service. As far as I know, Jack has redirected his efforts to Nostr.

I do think one useful heuristic for evaluating social media apps is whether company leadership and employees are actually participating on the platform.

When I open Twitter and Threads, I see Elon and Mark both posting regularly.

>"Twitter isn't focused on being a microblogging platform anymore, and X has a branding problem worse than that papa John's guy, John Schnatter."

It is amusing that accessing "X formerly known as Twitter" by typing "x.com" in a browser still resolves to twitter.com. Is there a reason that a CEO who is unbothered by abrupt and radical changes can't or won't retire the twitter.com domain?

Is there a practical reason for this? Certainly "tiwtter.com" being hardcoded everywhere would not rise to the level of an intractable problem.

Obviously there is a ton of technical debt involved and the devs convinced Musk not to deal with it yet. If they had hardcoded data center names , you can imagine what goes on with the domain.

Wouldn't amaze me if at least one of the major downtimes they've had has been an attempt to do this.

> I like mastodon, but it has been described as going to a quiet restaurant only to be handed a meat cleaver and an oven.

I like how a non-algo'd website is now basically being described as a massive pain

Suppose it depends on what you're used to. I started using Twitter in 2007 (no algorithm) and moved to accessing it pretty much exclusively by third party app by around 2010, and I bailed out shortly before Naughty ol' Mr Car killed the API, so I've ~no direct exposure to The Algorithm(TM); Mastodon thus suited me fine. But if you're used to an algorithm, I suppose Threads may suit better.

I wonder if the internet is splitting in two, those you interact with and those you doomscroll?

What features are missing from Twitter to be a better microblogging platform?

Google+ also had enormous early growth, but I don’t know anyone who used it beyond a test run. So far it’s been the same with Threads in my circle.

Does downloads really tell us much or is it just a vanity metric?

In my social sphere, most just used it as a test run, but then Twitter became a centre of rage, violence, and politics that the more apolitical ones are spending more time on Threads.

In my experience it’s not quite the opposite but quite different.

Twitter is fine for apolitical people. They don’t follow the politics. And then Twitter is fine for people of a certain political leaning.

Everything else in this space is for people who are political + left enough to want to leave Twitter because they follow enough political things to be annoyed at all.

> Does downloads really tell us much or is it just a vanity metric?

It doesn't.

Which is why they won't reveal the new daily active users (DAUs) on Threads which is one of the most important metrics on user usage and tells us if they are still sticking to using the platform. The last time I checked it was less than 25M DAUs.

Not even the author is using their Threads account in the article as a contact and is still posting more on X than Threads.

Agreed. My foray into threads was pretty much just rage bait.

The difference is this is tightly coupled with Instagram which is one of the most active networks already and they can easily cross pollinate the two for a long time and keep sucking up people who get fed up with Twitter.

How is it tightly coupled with Instagram?

Frictionless importing of following/follower profiles. Frictionless account creation. Threads nudges in instagram feed, and prompts in Instagram menus about unread thread posts..

Instagram shows previews of Threads posts and even sends you notifications about activity on Threads.

Threads shows up in your feed.

Yeah there was a certain set of news events that happened over the past couple months that turned X into a cesspool of people intentionally baiting each other and refusing to listen or show humanity.

Anecdotally Twitter traffic went _way_ down between 12/14 to 1/14. Seemed like a lot of people went on holiday vacation and didn't feel the need to come back.

The vast majority of Google+’s “growth” came from users of other Google apps who were pushed to convert their Google account to G+ but had no interest in using it otherwise, and they made the new Google account signup process push you into G+ even if you were just there for Gmail, YouTube, etc. They also counted a lot of activity in the apps people actually used as G+ interactions and refused to provide breakdowns for those stats, which suggests true interactions were really low.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/01/google-doubles-plus-...

Anecdotally, I move in nerdy circles but maybe 5% of the people I know used G+ at all, ever.

If Threads’ reported daily active users count is accurate in the 30M range, it’s already close to Google+ 40M _monthly_ active users near its peak:

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/technology/the-plus-in-go...

Threads is not perfect but everyone on there had at least some genuine interest and anecdotally people see far more activity than G+ ever managed. I hear a lot of comments that both Threads and Mastodon tend to have more real interactions, too, and that matches my experience where lower follower counts still translate into more activity.

The trajectory of Threads has been going up. They reached 100M MAU and that was before the EU launch.

I mainly like it for some of the cool communities active there (NBA and photography). and news is pretty good too

130 million monthly active users.. it's fairly big now https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/01/threads-now-reaches-more-1...

I really love Threads personally. I find it more chilled than Twitter but not as boring as Mastodon. The engagement I get is much, much higher than what I get on Twitter and the vibe seems friendlier.

My major complaint is none of the AI community are on it, aside from Meta researchers.

For now

Nobody I know/see in my social circles has ever linked to threads or really ever talked about it, in contrast everyone is linking tweets fairly often and X/twitter gets mentioned often. Just my observation.

Yeah, now that I think about it, I never see any screenshots on reddit either. I see tons from twitter.

Who is downloading threads? Haven't read or heard any talk on it in months. To be fair, I am far removed from the meta ecosystem.

The most obvious answer is people who can't stand Tucker Carlson or Alex Jones types. Lots of high profile political accounts have moved over from X. In the politics vein, lots of Ukrainian and Ukraine watchers as well, oddly enough. Aside from that, some machine learning accounts are pretty decent and have a growing community. - my 2¢

This may be a dumb question, but wouldn't one only see that content if they engage with it or follow people who engage with it?

An algorithmic feed of posts and replies within a post means that you see whatever an optimization function thinks will maximize revenue and engagement. And people on both sides fall for the bait and engage when they're shown what they disagree with.

Yes, you can absolutely curate your feed by following what you want to see more of, marking suggested tweets you don't like as see less often, block people etc. This is a non-issue.

You would think so, but it sure feels like all of the ad slots in my feed are almost always inundated with promoted posts from random rage-baiters on the right. I even muted "Trump" and a bunch of other politics-talk and still see it daily through ads.

Add to the fact that X is also trialing ads that don't get labeled as ads [1] (and just get promoted to your stream as if they're a normal post, but still have the "Why am I seeing this ad?" etc context menu), and it seems like there's more and more avenues every day for content to creep into your feed whether you interact with it or not.

[1] https://adguard.com/en/blog/twitter-x-ads-unlabelled-musk.ht...

I'm prevented from using it because I don't have an instagram account and I don't really want to download another app to sign up for this one.

I switched from twitter to threads pretty much immediately and traffic there comes and goes in waves when people get freshly annoyed at twitter about something. Most of the people I followed on twitter have threads accounts -- most of them crosspost there frequently, some of them only do when they're mad about something elon musk did and then go back to twitter.

Elron has proven that there really is such a thing as bad publicity. The changes made to the platform don't explain all aspects of its decline.

Your typo confused me as u recently started reading LOTR and I thought you were making some reference to Elrond lol

Never used Thread, so here is a stupid question:

Is it easier for non users to read things on thread compared to X and the need for the dying nitters?

Yes, if it is posted there, as threads doesn't hide anything from you.

X still hides new posts on profiles, and all replies to a post you are linked to. Nitter is crippled most of the time sadly, yeah.

Threads will probably only keep getting worse with time. Over the past year I've noticed a massive increase in ads on Instagram... Right now Threads is basically ad-free, but that won't last forever.

I know maybe one of two people that sometimes post on Thread, but it doesn't particularly feel like there's a strong sense of community. I think the era of public social media has kinda come to an end, and most interesting conversations have moved to private group chats and community Discord servers.

The only people I've seen participating regularly on Threads are people with massive followings, and even most of those barely seem to get any meaningful engagement.

Right now I just use Twitter to follow artists and a few tech personalities. But for most posters past a certain number of followers opening their replies is just utterly pointless. It's full of memes and irrelevant replies trying to farm views or engagement by leeching off the OP.

After the presidential election in Taiwan earlier this month, many important political figures (current president, next president, opposition leaders, A LOT OF parliament members...) suddenly got on Threads and started posting there actively. Their followers naturally also followed them there.

As for the reason... I still don't understand why lol

i am way more curious about threads than any of the other social media networks simply because i use ig quite a bit and they do a good job of surfacing threads posts in your ig feed

Threads is Facebook. To me, the more interesting one to watch is Bluesky.

Exactly. It is still Facebook (again). The controversies and problems that once happened on Facebook, Instagram, etc will happen on Threads.

Bluesky is more of a better solution in the long run.

Yeah this is why Threads will win. They have unlimited shots on goal due to being able to nudge users from IG over to threads literally billions of times per day. It can be bad one week, or month, or year, and they’ll still eventually get most IG users onto it. It doesn’t suffer from the “eh nothing for me here, I’m never coming back” problem that most other new networks do.

They opened up access to EU users in December[0] and presumably started running install banners inside Instagram in that region alongside the launch. How much of the growth is from EU vs. rest of world?

[0]: https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/threads-insta...

Yeah, I never signed up to Threads and on my Instagram feed the other day I saw a message saying "Sabrina sent you a message on Threads" with a picture of a girl in bikini that I never see. I tap on that and a modal dialog pops up saying "Sign Up to Threads to read the message".

Data point: I've been using threads since day one and deleted Twitter in day 2. Once every couple weeks or so I'll check out Twitter, but I've been on threads daily and haven't felt like I was missing anything.

Twitter isn't dead, but the core user group has obviously plateaued.

Huge X reader, actually used it more since Elon took it over and even more after reading the bio. One of the best things to come out for American democracy. Very clear he is being targeted especially after the ridiculous Delaware ruling.

The ridiculous Delaware ruling being the one where they found “if you sign a contract you are legally bound to its terms?”

Quite an exotic and ridiculous ruling lol

I find X unusable with all the gore and shock content that makes its way into my feed.

For me it's 2008 Facebook junk memes.

Idk what that says about my watch stats, I swear I hate them

Thank goodness for X. Frankly it may make sense to convert it into a non profit in the interim and then for profitize it once it can be run properly. If it were not for X then there is very little hope for American democracy.

I think if we were to see an X killer I’d much sooner predict Substack does it. I was sleeping on Substack a bit but it has many of the positive qualities of Twitter with many of the downsides removed:

* Notes are a short form platform but Substack itself is more long form centric. A huge problem of Twitter was excessive short form creates emphasis on snappy talking points over substance, but Substack more naturally lets you make your talking point but expound on it long form

* More creator-friendly letting you export your email list and leave the platform

* But has many the social media network strengths such as likes, retweets, recommends, etc

* Focused on strong writers as early users which lends itself more naturally to short form writing than the pictures of Instagram

* Doesn’t have the Facebook stigma that Threads has

Substack just feels like it has so many of the advantages of what Twitter offers while also being a new , unique thing. Threads feels more like Twitter, but by Zuckerberg, and the IG crowd seem less like natural writers than the journalists on Substack

I initially rolled my eyes at Substack being this big YC company around email lists, but I did admire some of their writers and since I’ve checked out their platform I’ve been extremely impressed.

It of course doesn’t have the same cultural cachet as Twitter but it also has none of the Taylor Swift deepfakes or bot armies. So a lot of headwinds. If I could bet on Threads, X, or Substack I’d wager on the Stack.

Substack has loads of real businesses 100% dependent on the platform, which is an incredible asset for the network as a whole. These are run by people that are going to fight hard to make Substack a valuable service.

This is something that Twitter never quite figured out, though Facebook has to a certain extent with Pages.

Substack has plenty of stigma [1], esp. among the type of people who left Twitter because they don't appreciate Elon's right wing extremism, including endorsement of actual Nazis [2]

[1] https://cybernews.com/news/platformer-leaves-substack/

[2] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-antisemitic-conspir...

It is akin to saying doubling down on 2-hour in-depth content will help YouTube beat TikTok. The clientele isn't looking for long form articles and deeply researched nuanced content, they want a quick dopamine feed and want to move on next.

Not really, it's akin to saying Youtube Shorts will help Youtube beat TikTok, as both Youtube Shorts and Substack Notes are the short-form version of their product.

I wonder why they didn’t integrate directly into Instagram main app. They did it for short video, why not text?

I’m not advocating this from a customer perspective; it just sounds like a good idea if they want to fully crush Elon’s Twitter

The whole point of Threads seemed to be the flex that they could blitzkrieg their app to market at the precise moment that Musk was floundering with the service and shedding users

Even Bluesky with a ex-Twitter folk and have been seemingly developing a competing platform couldn’t execute like that. Mastadon was in no position to capitalize like that.

So the choice to not integrate it into IG makes sense to me. All you have to do is be there, and timing is everything.

I wouldn't have downloaded it, as I didn't want an Instagram but wanted a threads account. I think they wanted clean branding to draw in new users, not converted from Instagram.

This would be a bad idea to pull Twitter users who don't like or use Instagram. You're unnecessarily combining to disparate social apps.

They did this by bringing the IG network to Threads. Social networks are the networks not the features.

Disagree. The type of people that like Instagram won't just arbitrarily start using threads which appeals to different audience. In that sense we will see if demand for a new twitter can just be created out of the user-base of Instagram. I have my doubts.

I think we agree then?

Threads was very much a rush job (as everybody from meta will happily tell you) so i'd guess at least part of the reason is expediency - if you don't integrate into instagram at all, you don't have to develop or test that integration.

but threads also seems to be an attempt to dip their toes into the fediverse (whether that's well-intentioned or just an attempt to avoid EU regulators). they don't seem nearly as eager to federate instagram so keeping it out of the main app can firewall off the federation experiment.

Still not gonna download it.

If Threads can manage to stick around for a few years I think it’s bound to pick up. Its catalyst might not be the current generations, it could be angling for Gen Alpha eventually.

Really curious why this post got flagged? Unfortunately, it's typical on here for any competitor to Musk's companies.

I hope @dang realizes this is a problem.

I literally don't know anyone who uses Threads.

I literally don't know anyone who watches cricket, and yet it's a world famous sport beloved by many many people. Case in point, it's erroneous to judge an app by your local network.

Perhaps his network is a robust sampling of people from all walks of life, and still he doesn’t know anyone that uses Threads.

I feel like this is like comparing a teenager’s YoY % growth and a newborn’s. Of course the newborn is going to have monstrous growth.

I do not know anyone that uses threads, and 1/2 the people in this thread are talking it up because they hate everything about Elon Musk.

We wont be using/talking about threads in 2 years. If you disagree, lets bet.

It seems it's once again time for the HN elite to declare Threads dead because they personally don't use it or know anyone in their amazing inner circle who uses it. This will surely be the year of the Linux desktop!

I don’t know anyone who uses Web3. It’s just a useless technology searching for a solution. All that growth in adoption is fake, I am sure of it.

Threads is as bad as Web3. Clearly no one wants it. Just wait…

Chris Dixon is still pumping it!

I have accounts on all of the X competitors, from Bluesky to Threads. I'd love there to be exciting communities there!

And yet I still come back to X. Execpt for some niche communities that have settled in them, they seem like ghosttowns.

Trading one overlord over another is never a wise choice.

Musk to staff: "Work harder! Forget that I keep saying things that kill traffic to the site."

We need a HN exclusive Musk Bingo game.

I'm guessing this is a mandatory app install on a new phone.

Well, almost every Techcrunch article is negative towards anything related to Musk. So ignore. Might be fake too.

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