Bluesky: Where are you going? How are you? What can you do? What are you waiting for? How do you decide where to hang out?
The question is if Meta can cultivate a space that feels like a party, and if you would choose to hang out there.
This is the thing that Bluesky got right, built on a different protocol. The software is easy to use. But the people who use the invitation-only app, for the most part, seem to be having a good time. Its team has wisely slowed the pace of invitations in hopes it can retain the goofy, shitposting ethos that has defined it so far, and that has kept me coming back every day to see what people are talking about.
Only a few dozen people are working on threads, which is a relatively small team. That might be the biggest team of people currently working on a realTwitter competitor in the United States. If Threads can make improvements to the user experience quicker than its rivals, it could become the one to beat. (Two obvious places to start: working embeds that let me put Those Good Threads here in the newsletter, and one-tap cross-posting from Threads to Instagram stories, with links inserted in the stories to aid in discovery.)
Threads: How do you launch a Twitter feed? A conversation with Aaron Mosseri at the VOA’s Summit on Metathreads
“It’s not nearly as hard to get a bunch of people to try something as it is to build something a bunch of people want to keep using over time,” Mosseri said.
Threads is likely to annoy Musk into making worse mistakes than he already has. I am not surprised he will challenge Mosseri to a martial arts fight.
Mosseri said that it was between those guys. When we spoke, the launch of Threads was mere hours away, and he was late for a meeting. Making sure the thing works well is what I will focus on. I will allow them to engage on the rest.
The early hours of Threads have been light on drama. But that’s what you would expect from a user base that consists primarily of huge celebrities, influencers, and Instagram employees.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/5/23785194/meta-threads-twitter-social-media-moderation-adam-mosseri
Is it worth waiting on the EU? Comment on Meta’s decision to shut Threads in the Activity Pulse app a lot longer than it seems
“That’s just going to take a while, unfortunately — and I’m particularly frustrated about this point, because I’ve been living outside of the US for a year now,” said Mosseri, who has been working from London. I have gotten my teams to stop launching things in only a few countries and not in other countries. We either waited on the EU or delayed the launch by many, many months. And I was worried that our window would close, because timing is important.”
The Data Privacy Commission in Ireland received a letter from Meta stating that it had no plans to launch Threads in the bloc. The Irish watchdog is Meta’s main privacy regulator for the EU because the company’s regional headquarters is based in Dublin.
How much money is there for Meta? Likely ads, though as is typically the case when Meta launches a new product, it will be ad-free to start as the company explores whether it can attract enough users to make it a meaningful business opportunity. Mosseri said that they aren’t focused on it right now.
Mosseri said that threads will only show posts from its own server, and that they will be governed by community standards. But ActivityPub actually lets services like Threads choose to block some forms of content before they make it onto the app, Mosseri said. Most of the worst content moderation issues will be kept under control by this.
Why aren’t a lot of tweets popping up in Twitter? What do you like? How much is it worth? What are the tradeoffs?
“There definitely are trade offs,” Mosseri said. You are giving up control. But there are benefits. I do think over time, it’s going to be a more compelling value proposition that other apps are going to offer. And I think that should attract more creative talent over the long run.”
“The post-and-comment model is great,” Mosseri said. The public discourse does not support it as much as the model of replies on social media. Elevating the reply to the same level as the original post allows for much more robust, diverse discourse. Which is part of the reason we didn’t just try to shove this thing into the feed on Instagram or a separate tab.”
By the standards of Twitter 2.0, though, it can feel like a miracle. Is it possible to read unlimited posts for free? On a robust network that basically never goes down? It is monitored by a robust team of content editors, who follow community guidelines.
Everyone would have rolled their eyes if Meta had launched this app in 2019. Its big new feature is … logging in with Instagram? Come on.
It’s basically Twitter in 2010 but has one nice feature added since then, the quote-tweet, which Mastodon has avoided adding but I think is an essential feature of the modern-day Twitter experience.
From there … it’s basically just Twitter. You type your sentences and add a photo if you like. You post your … Stitches? Are you talking about strings? Threats? … into the feed. The tabs represent notifications and a heart. You can conduct a search for other users. You can reply.
It is already easier to follow people on Mastodon than it is to follow them on this app. You have to know the server and complete name to follow someone on Mastodon. It’s as easy on Threads as it is on their IG account. (I’m @crumbler.) I believe that it is a small thing that could make a difference.
You log in with your Instagram handle. If you like, you can import your Instagram bio and photo with a single click as well. You can follow anyone on Threads who you already follow on another social network, as you join Threads, you will follow them as well.
It opens a simple feed that is similar to the one you would see on your home timeline on social media. threads has recommended posts from around the network that are useful for knowing what’s happening on the app You do not have a way to see a feed of users that you follow. There’s no way to find anything other than user handles and there are also no edit buttons.
I’ve spent the past few hours testing Threads, which will begin to land in app stores just as this newsletter goes out. It’s a fairly bare-bones interpretation of a text-based messaging app.
That latter statement is less true as the day goes on. The past week’s astonishingly foolish decision by Elon Musk to limit free users to viewing 600 posts a day — enough for maybe 20 minutes of scrolling, maybe less — has sent a fresh wave of Twitter users looking for alternatives.
Mosseri told me in December he was torn between moving forward with a new competitor or not. It’s much easier to fail a new social app than it is to succeed.
” Meta risks are too thin”, said Mike Proulx, a research director at Forrester. Meta is banking on a moment in time. Bluesky, Mastodon, spill, Post.News and Hive all compete for market share, which is why this window of opportunity is flooded with them.
Users get a Twitter-like microblogging experience, according to screenshots provided to media, suggesting that Meta Platforms has been gearing up to directly challenge the platform after Musk’s tumultuous ownership has resulted in a series of unpopular changes that have turned off users and advertisers.
Meta Launches Its Rival App Threads As It Takes Imat Twitter: A Brief History of the Theoretical Developments
The app went live just after midnight Wednesday in the U.K. in Apple and Google Android app stores in more than 100 countries including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan. The celebrity users early on included Gordon Ramsay and Mark Hoyle, who was known as the ” Lad Baby”.
A post can include links and photos up to five minutes long, and is limited to 500 characters.
Instagram users will be able to log in with their existing usernames and follow the same accounts on the new app. New users will have to set up an Instagram account.
Meta emphasized measures to keep users safe, including enforcing Instagram’s community guidelines and providing tools to control who can mention or reply to users.
The data privacy disclosure for Threads on the App Store says it could collect a wide range of personal information, including health, financial contacts, browsing and search history, location data, purchases and “sensitive info.”
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey pointed it out in a snarky tweet saying, “All your Threads are belong to us” that included a screenshot of the disclosure. Musk replied that was true.
Meta had teased Threads with a listing on Apple’s app store in the U.k., but it was not found in French, German, or Dutch versions. The decision to hold off on a European launch of the app is due to regulatory uncertainty, but the company is working on rolling it out to more countries.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/07/05/1186149939/meta-launches-its-rival-app-threads-as-it-takes-aim-at-twitter
Meta, Twitter, and Competing Bose-Einstein: Where the Musk’s ring meets the real life: Are the layoffs going to ring?
Also in question is whether it’s the right move for Meta, which has announced tens of thousands of layoffs over the past year amid a tech industry slowdown.
He’s made a series of changes that have triggered backlash, the latest being daily limits on the number of tweets people can view to try to stop unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data. He also is now requiring paid verification for users to access the online dashboard TweetDeck.
Musk’s rivalry could end up spilling over into real life. The two technology billionaires apparently agreed to a face-off, but it is unclear if they will make it to the ring.