Bluesky Exceeds Threads DAUs in the US | Hacker News Reader

Bluesky Exceeds Threads DAUs in the US

bsky.app

37 pointsKarrot_Kream23 comments

Refutation[0] from head of Instagram

> There is no way this is the case as we have many times as many daily users as they have total signups. Maybe this data is web data?

[0] https://www.threads.net/@mosseri/post/DCkAjj1y5qz

> web data

One would expect that these networks are still part of web.

The meaning, clear by original context, of the author, head at instagram, would be "web data [as opposed to [total user web &] app usage data]". Which matches closer to what he's responsible for in parallel.

But, continuing technical distinctions outside of original context, in web jargon, web would be HTML served over HTTP (preferably even on www subdomains), and, by my single-utterance litmus test: "browser-viewable". These apps do make content available over/on the web, but having the distinction available seems worthwhile, web traffic versus app traffic. Many apps don't. Some of the content is meaningfully "not on the web" by the same common sense appeal.

The graph represents only web DAUs (no app) and only in US and UK, here is the original source with more context, including graph for global DAUs https://www.similarweb.com/blog/insights/social-media-news/b...

Doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Threads has always seemed to be an afterthought for Meta. The only reason I even remember it exists is because every so often in the Instagram newsfeed there's "promoted" posts from Threads.

Whether it's for Bluesky or Threads, a lot of interesting people in Fintwit are leaving X and it definitely feels like it's about to reach the critical mass.

Not really surprising since on X, 99% of answers on finance related posts are crypto scam bots, but still quite a big change.

Threads seems like it was designed by people who want me to be angry. Bluesky seems like it was designed by people who want me to be happy.

I notice I stay on threads longer, often thinking “people can’t possibly believe this nonsense,” and I notice that I’m angry after using it for some time. I stay on Bluesky for much shorter periods, and I often feel peaceful (even bordering on bored) after a session.

I use these threads as meditiation: have a deeper understanding of how people different from me think and accepting that it's part of the world.

Nowdays I'm much more scared than angry about socialist thinking getting us all closer to WW3 though.

> socialist thinking getting us all closer to WW3 though

I would love if you elaborated on that

I would love even more if the op would give us their definition of socialism. Because, to me, it means wanting to help others and make the world a better place. I expect op and I will disagree on that, given that we on the actual Left (not centrist libs) are deeply opposed to war, hence making the comment out of place (again, to me).

We can all agree of helping others, making the world a better place and being deeply opposed to war being important values. The hard part where it's important / interesting to discuss is what achieves it the best and what takes precedent over what.

I loved listening to Lex Friedman's imterview with Javier Milei as he was describing how Argentina went to a state of almost hyperinflation by the government helping every poor person with overtacation and overregulation.

I believe that the main reason for wars (and the only way it can be achieved) is money printing (elespecially creating bonds).

Most people from US would never agree in sending money to Ukraine (or at least not everybody) if the amout was explicitly written out on their tax statement. Also I believe the governments shouldn't take money away from people to redistribute how they want (just the minimal amout that they need for keeping up a working society).

Threads default timeline is "suggested" and nearly all of the content is days old. There was a joke that we were going to be seeing threads about how Kamala crushing it in the polls and is going to win in a landslide days after Trump won, and that joke became a sad reality. Twitter was fun because it was nearly realtime.

The quality of the default timeline is also extremely poor. It's entirely engagement bait, most of which tends to be rage bait. Like all Meta properties, they've just taken facebook and presented it a different way. Instagram's feeds, when you haven't muted suggested content is the same, but pictures/reels instead of text.

I really wish Meta would stop trying to remake Facebook, but engagement sells ads, and they're in the business of selling ads.

MAU/DAU have always somewhat seemed like dishonest metrics anyway, plus things like network effect and news cycles ("Threads has so many users!" yeah because it just came out). What if a company juices the metrics like say, not including messages in your email anymore, so you have to physically go to Facebook?

Zuckerberg's products seem a bit... derivative. They're all copied from other products in really dishonest ways

Being derivative isn’t necessarily a bad business strategy as long as you improve on whatever you’re deriving from.

This is not a bad point, but I just think of the example of Instagram (which has now for a while presented a hard login wall if you want to scroll, well, anything). It was the photo app, and the quality of the photos have gone down as they fill the feed with more and more crap

I think Zuck just wants to own everyone else's stuff

At least with Bluesky you can trivially download the entire firehose and determine the number of e.g. users liking at least one post. According to public stats [1] based on this data, ~2.8M unique users liked posts yesterday, which aligns very well with the daily active users shown on the graph.

The comparison might be wrong for other reasons, but Bluesky pumping their numbers is probably not one of them.

[1] https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats

they are pumping the numbers. you can clock how many posts per second are happening in real time world wide on the firehose with the following (need "pv" command and websocat command):

./websocat4.x86_64-unknown-linux-musl wss://jetstream.atproto.tools/subscribe\?wantedCollections=app.bsky.feed.post |pv --line-mode --rate > /dev/null

I can prove the posts are DECLINING EVERY DAY, and now so can you.

this number never clocked over 160 posts per second.

its trending DOWN to 88-100 posts per second rather than going up, despite adding "20 million people" and "a million a day."

its not growing. its dying. pfraze and jay gruber are lying. as someone who was already there in the first place, and just got smacked down a month ago over rubbish , with ycombinator comments in my history to prove it , i can tell you that all the artists and things that made bluesky bluesky - including me - are gone smothered suffocated silenced and banned and now all you see are piping hot US political takes all day. im not even in the united states which is why i am livid about the new arrivals and the agenda.

so you have millions of "new accounts" that arent posting anything.

are these just bots to "like" jojo and the krassensteins TDS posting?

there are threads on places i shant mention, describing how new users are scrutinized to see if theyre anywhere politically to the right of Mao and hatebombing / harassing/moderating/banning them immediately. how is this even possible with a million new accounts a day?

I get your point, but just because its a spike doesn't mean that it's incorrect. DAU will slowly wash over, but consitent users will show a successful spike

I can't remember what company it was (and failed to turn it up on search), but someone (a streaming service, I think?) claimed, in a press release, how excited they were to have the highest number of users or downloads or account signups (or whatever) since launch. On the day after launch, if memory serves. Whatever the exact details, the circumstance was essentially, "we're pretending this is a meaningful metric," when it clearly wasn't because there was no history against which to compare.

Gotta juice those numbers and make the Street happy by any means necessary. The system is broken, but oh well.

> Zuckerberg's products seem a bit... derivative. They're all copied from other products in really dishonest ways

Was very successful for Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc and others. They do not care.

Each of them have made acquisitions to copy their competition.

Would be nice to see some real effort by Threads. I think a lot of organizations (companies, non-profits, local government, etc.) would be happy to have a Twitter alternative that is as drama-free as Instagram.

> as drama-free as Instagram.

Have you been on Insta lately?

Why didn't Threads work? Because Zuck is trying to do the bad boy act of Elon but all those who are interested in that are already on Twitter. He will always remain a nerd as long as is building a web app like Facebook. Elon at least has street cred of rockets.

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