<story><title>Threads users down by more than a half</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66336058</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ghaff</author><text>It’s hard to say. What I see is a lot of people in my network really scaling back or dropping Twitter and maybe playing with the alternatives but not really embracing them. I suspect that for many it will be a case of “Social media was nice while it lasted.”</text></item><item><author>dahwolf</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s pretty common that after a peak of new signups, most do not convert to long term active users. This doesn&amp;#x27;t even take into account that most &amp;quot;active users&amp;quot; tend to never post anything, they just leech. They still count as MAU. I&amp;#x27;m sure that Meta has plenty of ways to boost that number in the long term but overall I find the entire thing underwhelming.&lt;p&gt;Threads is text-based Instagram. But not even that as you can very well include photos. It has exactly the same shallow culture as Instagram: commercial, flat, vain.&lt;p&gt;Meta has openly expressed that it&amp;#x27;s disinterested or even hostile to news&amp;#x2F;journalism making their way to the platform (which comes with a lot of political flame-wars), instead to focus on making it a &amp;quot;fun&amp;quot; platform. Quite obviously because advertisers prefer networks without controversy.&lt;p&gt;Users may self-censor as on Threads the link to your real name is not very far away. Many users may have a real name Insta account linked up which in turn is linked to your Facebook account. Even if not visibility linked to your real name, internally you should assume it&amp;#x27;s there. So who knows what happens to all those accounts when you step over the line in Threads?&lt;p&gt;Hence, it&amp;#x27;s not Twitter which is defined by the culture war taking the main stage. Twitter is raw, edgy and toxic. It&amp;#x27;s also known for its real-time coverage of events, which Threads so far lacks. It also produces quite a lot of original content, whether they be memes or otherwise. You&amp;#x27;ll find none of that originating on Meta networks.&lt;p&gt;As Twitter seems on its way down, especially high follower users (such as journalists) are lost. There is no longer a &amp;quot;cultural network&amp;quot; where you push a message and get reach. None of the alternatives work for this purpose either.&lt;p&gt;I have no idea what will become of Twitter, but I do know to keep an open mind as we live in wild times. Just because Musk is a chaos monkey does not mean that it will not eventually rebound or even surpass old Twitter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dahwolf</author><text>I think that&amp;#x27;s an excellent point. Social media fatigue seems at its peak in this time of transition, further accelerated by the COVID era.&lt;p&gt;People are becoming aware of their over-usage and the largely minimal or even negative benefits that come from social media altogether. Or just bored and indifferent about it. The fatigue is further strengthened when they soon learn that the alternatives are worse or at best just moving the problem.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d advocate for people to stop rather than cheer for any new potential winner. Just uninstall the app and walk away. It was all a lie anyway. You&amp;#x27;re not in a &amp;quot;community&amp;quot;. You do not actually have followers. You did not learn anything new that you couldn&amp;#x27;t learn elsewhere.&lt;p&gt;They are lies we tell ourselves as we play the slot machine. Throw it in the trash.</text></comment>
<story><title>Threads users down by more than a half</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66336058</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ghaff</author><text>It’s hard to say. What I see is a lot of people in my network really scaling back or dropping Twitter and maybe playing with the alternatives but not really embracing them. I suspect that for many it will be a case of “Social media was nice while it lasted.”</text></item><item><author>dahwolf</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s pretty common that after a peak of new signups, most do not convert to long term active users. This doesn&amp;#x27;t even take into account that most &amp;quot;active users&amp;quot; tend to never post anything, they just leech. They still count as MAU. I&amp;#x27;m sure that Meta has plenty of ways to boost that number in the long term but overall I find the entire thing underwhelming.&lt;p&gt;Threads is text-based Instagram. But not even that as you can very well include photos. It has exactly the same shallow culture as Instagram: commercial, flat, vain.&lt;p&gt;Meta has openly expressed that it&amp;#x27;s disinterested or even hostile to news&amp;#x2F;journalism making their way to the platform (which comes with a lot of political flame-wars), instead to focus on making it a &amp;quot;fun&amp;quot; platform. Quite obviously because advertisers prefer networks without controversy.&lt;p&gt;Users may self-censor as on Threads the link to your real name is not very far away. Many users may have a real name Insta account linked up which in turn is linked to your Facebook account. Even if not visibility linked to your real name, internally you should assume it&amp;#x27;s there. So who knows what happens to all those accounts when you step over the line in Threads?&lt;p&gt;Hence, it&amp;#x27;s not Twitter which is defined by the culture war taking the main stage. Twitter is raw, edgy and toxic. It&amp;#x27;s also known for its real-time coverage of events, which Threads so far lacks. It also produces quite a lot of original content, whether they be memes or otherwise. You&amp;#x27;ll find none of that originating on Meta networks.&lt;p&gt;As Twitter seems on its way down, especially high follower users (such as journalists) are lost. There is no longer a &amp;quot;cultural network&amp;quot; where you push a message and get reach. None of the alternatives work for this purpose either.&lt;p&gt;I have no idea what will become of Twitter, but I do know to keep an open mind as we live in wild times. Just because Musk is a chaos monkey does not mean that it will not eventually rebound or even surpass old Twitter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>anyfoo</author><text>My impression as well. Though I&amp;#x27;m biased, because it&amp;#x27;s also the case for me specifically, so I tend to see the world through that same lens.&lt;p&gt;In my case, I didn&amp;#x27;t give up social media entirely, but mostly shifted back to &amp;quot;web forums&amp;quot;, which also seem to be experiencing some sort of renaissance (another data point). They have more of a local&amp;#x2F;semi-closed community feeling, as opposed to the &amp;quot;wide open sea&amp;quot; of major social media.&lt;p&gt;I consider HN to be one of those &amp;quot;forums&amp;quot;, although it&amp;#x27;s more a bit of a hybrid between the two worlds, and of course it has been existing all along.</text></comment>