OT: Anybody Sign Up With Threads Yet?

[mildone_rivals]

Seems that Instagram's new twitter competitor, Threads, has reached 100M users in its first week. It's early days, so despite the volume of users, it's no sure thing to succeed.

Anybody sign up yet? Or plan to do so?

I have to think Musk, or at least upper management at twitter, are regretting their misstep-laden stewardship of the company since Musk acquired it. In particular, the self-destructive post-views limit they imposed on all twitter users.

https://www.engadget.com/one-week-i...witters-biggest-threat-140050889.html?src=rss

 

[Roy_Faulker]

Easy to sign up to by using your instagram credential.

 

[CollegeSenior]

I was going to but I don’t have, and don’t want, an Instagram account. There’s no way around that, right?

 

[mildone_rivals]

I was going to but I don’t have, and don’t want, an Instagram account. There’s no way around that, right?

Not sure. I haven't tried signing up yet, but I probably will just to check it out.

I have an instagram account although I have yet to post anything. I think I only ever posted like 4 times in twitter. I'm shy about expressing myself online.

 

[RUskoolie]

Don't get caught up in the hype. Everyone rushed into Tik Tok 2 years ago.

I don't need another social media app, I need less. I have rivals and Instagram. That's it.

 

[DJ Spanky]

Easy to sign up to by using your instagram credential.

BUT........the only way to delete your threads account is to delete your instagram account.

 

[RUinPinehurst]

I have a Threads account. Logged on a few times and followed a number of news and financial outlets. The other stuff they feed you indicates Threads needs to adjust it's algorithms to push more relevant content vs the nonsense currently suggested. It'll happen. Hopefully soon.

 

[mildone_rivals]

I have a Threads account. Logged on a few times and followed a number of news and financial outlets. The other stuff they feed you indicates Threads needs to adjust it's algorithms to push more relevant content vs the nonsense currently suggested. It'll happen. Hopefully soon.

Pretty sure they'll figure out content algorithms as more people start contributing content. Signing up users is a start but those users have to post stuff or it all falls apart.

Seems like there's a decent symbiotic relationship between the photo/video nature of Instagram and the textual nature of Threads. Which is, in part I guess, why it's there instead of associated with FB accounts.

I also won't be surprised to see them allow the creation of a Threads account without any connection to Instagram (at least that the user will perceive). I think they wanted to have the connection initially just to use Instagram's user base as a jumping off point. And judging by the numbers so far, it seemed to work.

Pretty interesting how fast it was spun up.

 

[newell138]

Seems that Instagram's new twitter competitor, Threads, has reached 100M users in its first week. It's early days, so despite the volume of users, it's no sure thing to succeed.

Anybody sign up yet? Or plan to do so?

I have to think Musk, or at least upper management at twitter, are regretting their misstep-laden stewardship of the company since Musk acquired it. In particular, the self-destructive post-views limit they imposed on all twitter users.

https://www.engadget.com/one-week-i...witters-biggest-threat-140050889.html?src=rss

I was going to sign up but then I realized I’m not a 16 year old girl

 

[mildone_rivals]

I was going to sign up but then I realized I’m not a 16 year old girl

You’re only realizing that now?

 

[tom1944]

I have both Twitter and now Threads and I think they both are bad.

 

[brgRC90]

Seems that Instagram's new twitter competitor, Threads, has reached 100M users in its first week. It's early days, so despite the volume of users, it's no sure thing to succeed.

Anybody sign up yet? Or plan to do so?

I have to think Musk, or at least upper management at twitter, are regretting their misstep-laden stewardship of the company since Musk acquired it. In particular, the self-destructive post-views limit they imposed on all twitter users.

https://www.engadget.com/one-week-i...witters-biggest-threat-140050889.html?src=rss

I think the biggest mistake he made was antagonizing people when he first bought it. Not a good idea to turn people off when you're trying to attract as many as possible. All the mis-steps since then have added to that.

 

[mildone_rivals]

I think the biggest mistake he made was antagonizing people when he first bought it. Not a good idea to turn people off when you're trying to attract as many as possible. All the mis-steps since then have added to that.

The biggest mistake was buying twitter in the first place. Seems clear his acquisitions team told him it was a really bad idea. But noooooo, he was going to save freedom of speech.

Then he significantly compounded that first mistake by treating twitter employees like dime-a-dozen, replaceable minimum wage workers. Causing all the talented tech people, the people who actually make stuff work well, at twitter to instantly quit and go work for competitors or for startups. So now twitter is staffed almost entirely by tech workers who aren't even confident enough in their abilities to flee a jerk CEO and a toxic work environment.

Next he took a bunch of actions that caused advertisers to flee. And now he's refusing to pay his bills.

With a net worth of over $200B, he doesn't care. The only thing that's harmed are other people and his ego.

 

[brgRC90]

The biggest mistake was buying twitter in the first place. Seems clear his acquisitions team told him it was a really bad idea. But noooooo, he was going to save freedom of speech.

Then he significantly compounded that first mistake by treating twitter employees like dime-a-dozen, replaceable minimum wage workers. Causing all the talented tech people, the people who actually make stuff work well, at twitter to instantly quit and go work for competitors or for startups. So now twitter is staffed almost entirely by tech workers who aren't even confident enough in their abilities to flee a jerk CEO and a toxic work environment.

Next he took a bunch of actions that caused advertisers to flee. And now he's refusing to pay his bills.

With a net worth of over $200B, he doesn't care. The only thing that's harmed are other people and his ego.

He definitely paid way too much for a business that was not in high demand or very profitable. Not sure who advised him on that or if that was his own foolishness and out of control ego. The only thing that could save Twitter and make the investment worthwhile would be if he succeeds in turning it into an everything app.

 

[mildone_rivals]

I have both Twitter and now Threads and I think they both are bad.

How so? I'm not arguing - just wondering what you think makes them bad.

I don't see them as inherently bad and I like using twitter as an aggregator of articles of topics about which I'm interested. Automotive and tech mostly. I could manually visit all the different websites. But it's easier to let twitter list all the new tweeted article headlines and scroll through them in my feed to see if there are any articles I want to read.

There is definitely a problem with how easy social media makes mass manipulation through disinformation. And that reveals just how many people out there lack the ability to engage in objective critical thought.

But maybe making that problem so publicly visible is a good thing. Because it informs us about just how much work we still have to do to improve education in this country.

 

[Rutgers Chris]

He definitely paid way too much for a business that was not in high demand or very profitable. Not sure who advised him on that or if that was his own foolishness and out of control ego. The only thing that could save Twitter and make the investment worthwhile would be if he succeeds in turning it into an everything app.

The user experience on Twitter has improved since he bought it. I think that bodes well for the long term.

I’ve never had Facebook or Instagram so not sure I’ll be inclined to add threads

 

[mildone_rivals]

The user experience on Twitter has improved since he bought it. I think that bodes well for the long term.

It has? How so?

I've seen no difference at all.

 

[RUevolution36]

It has? How so?

I've seen no difference at all.

It's gotten worse, imo. Random feature updates that don't work, unstable connectivity.

Threads is fine except for two things, imo.

1 - No ability to have a view of only the people you follow. They are highly leveraging the "suggested posts" algorithm of IG.

2 - No chronological view. I use Twitter for up to the minute news - sports and otherwise. Me seeing a 3 day old post about some event is not useful to me.

 

[mildone_rivals]

It's gotten worse, imo. Random feature updates that don't work, unstable connectivity.

Threads is fine except for two things, imo.

1 - No ability to have a view of only the people you follow. They are highly leveraging the "suggested posts" algorithm of IG.

2 - No chronological view. I use Twitter for up to the minute news - sports and otherwise. Me seeing a 3 day old post about some event is not useful to me.

Now that I think about it, it's gotten worse for me for two reasons:

1. I used to use a third party client for twitter 'cause I never much liked the twitter client. Musk ordered API access shut down killing off most third party client tools.

2. A view-limit as imposed a couple weeks ago is obviously not an example of a good user experience. In fact, user experience doesn't get much worse than "everything suddenly stops working entirely".

The more I think about it, the more I realize that Musk has to go (from twitter). His actions at twitter show him to be a person with little or no ethical inhibitions. Which means he'll do whatever he wants regardless of the impact on anyone else. So I have no doubt he'd sell our user data on the dark web if it struck him as a good idea. And it's clear that no amount of push-back, if there is anybody left at twitter who would dare push back, would going to stop him.

 

[Rutgers Chris]

It has? How so?

I've seen no difference at all.

Reply function in chats was a small but monumental change for those that use it, less bots, more functionality in posts (longer posts, adding images within posts, etc).

The rate block didn’t affect me personally. I don’t get to wrapped up in the noise of Musk, I’m simply talking about how I use the app

 

[tom1944]

How so? I'm not arguing - just wondering what you think makes them bad.

I don't see them as inherently bad and I like using twitter as an aggregator of articles of topics about which I'm interested. Automotive and tech mostly. I could manually visit all the different websites. But it's easier to let twitter list all the new tweeted article headlines and scroll through them in my feed to see if there are any articles I want to read.

There is definitely a problem with how easy social media makes mass manipulation through disinformation. And that reveals just how many people out there lack the ability to engage in objective critical thought.

But maybe making that problem so publicly visible is a good thing. Because it informs us about just how much work we still have to do to improve education in this country.

I am old so not technically solid, and I find them difficult to use/follow. Also, the garbage that gets posted makes me think they are not worthwhile to bother to read more than a post or two.

 

[mildone_rivals]

Reply function in chats was a small but monumental change for those that use it, less bots, more functionality in posts (longer posts, adding images within posts, etc).

The rate block didn’t affect me personally. I don’t get to wrapped up in the noise of Musk, I’m simply talking about how I use the app

I see. I pretty much never post on twitter, so I'd never notice anything w/chats or replies or other stuff related to posting. And I too don't really care about Musk - replace him with anyone and I'd have the exact same things to say about the glaring errors of judgement and mismanagement. It just happens to be him.

The view limit stupidity seems to have been a problematic "last-straw" kind of thing for a lot of folks, including advertisers. There are much better, less self-destructive ways to detect and prevent data-mining than view limits. Stuff the remaining techs at twitter all know about. So I suspect that was BS covering the real reason which had to do with emergency cost-cutting which goes along with not paying bills. Or else it's about something else we don't know about. Definitely not about preventing data-mining.

 

[mildone_rivals]

I am old so not technically solid, and I find them difficult to use/follow. Also, the garbage that gets posted makes me think they are not worthwhile to bother to read more than a post or two.

I see. I think people use twitter in different ways.

I only ever read what shows up in my feed, which is stuff from websites I follow. I don't see trending tweets or popular tweets, etc. I have no interest in seeing whatever might be trending on twitter. My feed, in general, just pushes out "notices" to me when websites I'm interested in publish new stuff. So I avoid seeing all the garbage.

Whereas lots of other people allow twitter to dictate their content based on what they click on or pause over while scrolling through their feeds. Which can be interesting I suppose because it's a way of discovering new personalities or developing new interests. But it can suck because it's a form of mass manipulation - even when innocent of an agenda, it's a subtle medium for controlling thought.

I can understand the appeal of the latter approach for others. But I have no interest in it.

 

[RU4Real]

I've tried to seriously restrict my Facebook use the last several years - I no longer have the FB app on my phone and only log in with my browser about once a week or so. I don't have an Instagram account and have no interest in having one, so... no.

 

[mildone_rivals]

I've tried to seriously restrict my Facebook use the last several years - I no longer have the FB app on my phone and only log in with my browser about once a week or so. I don't have an Instagram account and have no interest in having one, so... no.

I like FB because my feed there shows me like 90% cool and uplifting animal videos. 5% are animal videos of people taking irritatingly stupid risks to hang out with animals that might suddenly decide to eat them. The remaining 5% are ads for stuff I was talking about with whomever I was hanging out last.

Once a week, they try to sneak a post from one of my FB friends into the feed. Usually something humorous.

FB has me figured out.

 

[RU848789]

Why would I need new threads, when I have these?

 

[RUschool]

Is this site considered social media? If not, I don’t use social media.

 

[iReC89]

Is this site considered social media? If not, I don’t use social media.

interesting question. I've used work related message boards that are 100% professional and I would not consider them to be social media, so my definition might hinge on what is being discussed and how. For some on here it is. For others just looking for football recruiting, news and analysis, maybe not. But I may be wrong.

 

[RU4Real]

I like FB because my feed there shows me like 90% cool and uplifting animal videos. 5% are animal videos of people taking irritatingly stupid risks to hang out with animals that might suddenly decide to eat them. The remaining 5% are ads for stuff I was talking about with whomever I was hanging out last.

Once a week, they try to sneak a post from one of my FB friends into the feed. Usually something humorous.

FB has me figured out.

I'm trying to figure out why Facebook insists on showing me videos of slightly overweight Philipino chicks dancing in bikinis.

 

[MADHAT1]

I'm trying to figure out why Facebook insists on showing me videos of slightly overweight Philipino chicks dancing in bikinis.

because the skinny ones are dancing on tic tok

 

[DJ Spanky]

because the skinny ones are dancing on tic tok

 

[ashokan]

Seems that Instagram's new twitter competitor, Threads, has reached 100M users in its first week. It's early days, so despite the volume of users, it's no sure thing to succeed.

Anybody sign up yet? Or plan to do so?

I have to think Musk, or at least upper management at twitter, are regretting their misstep-laden stewardship of the company since Musk acquired it. In particular, the self-destructive post-views limit they imposed on all twitter users.

https://www.engadget.com/one-week-i...witters-biggest-threat-140050889.html?src=rss

I wouldn't put much stock in user account numbers.
A lot of them have been bogus since socials began.
Musk bought a low profit crime scene but he also wanted Twitter as tool to merge with his own AI company and Tesla.

https://nypost.com/2023/07/14/elon-musk-says-his-new-xai-firm-will-use-twitter-data-work-with-tesla/

Zuck is just a code monkey who bombed with "Meta"
Musk is an engineer who actually is "big tech"
No telling what Musk has up his sleeve and Zuck doesn't even have sleeves
Remember "Hot or Not" site where girls were ranked by users?
That's how Facebook started out at Harvard

 

[RU4Real]

Remember "Hot or Not" site where girls were ranked by users?
That's how Facebook started out at Harvard

And that's how it should have stayed.

 

[GoodOl'Rutgers]

To me this is just another Zuckerbucks thing. Minimize any political fairness that resulted from Twitter becoming more of a free speech space. If Zuckerberg can move everyone on the left off twitter then he can make sure they never see "misinformation" before teh next election.

And Musk is Thomas Edison and PT Barnum. But remember.. the great inventor Edison really just created a factory of ideas of others pursuing inventions. His genius was capitalizing on the genius of others.. and that's what Musk does.. gives them direction and resources to succeed.

 

[MADHAT1]

Zuckerbucks and Muskmoney are only in this for profit, even if Musk's efferts seem to be hurting his money making .. Zuck might lose a little at times, but always makes the bucks
But Musk's version of fee speech is what he wants it to be and if you want to be misinformed, twitter is the place to be.
Twitter is a place you can yell fire in a crowded theater without a fire and be praised for how loud you can yell.

 

[WhoRU?]

Last week Twitter became MySpace.

 

[MulletCork]

Make sure you take a look at the insane amount of data harvesting going on at Threads ! Read it closely. Scary stuff.
What would one expect from Zuckerberg though ?

Seems the week one buzz wore off and engagements are down significantly now.

 

[MADHAT1]

Make sure you take a look at the insane amount of data harvesting going on at Threads ! Read it closely. Scary stuff.
What would one expect from Zuckerberg though ?

Seems the week one buzz wore off and engagements are down significantly now.

could be the Instagram tie in made the buzz slow down.
Starting a thread account and dropping it losing Instagram if you do probably is a big turn-off
As for data harvesting , the fact is: other major social media apps, including Twitter, also collect user data.

 

[mildone_rivals]

Make sure you take a look at the insane amount of data harvesting going on at Threads ! Read it closely. Scary stuff.
What would one expect from Zuckerberg though ?

Seems the week one buzz wore off and engagements are down significantly now.

What’s your source for specifically what data is being harvested?

Just about every digital device or app you’re using is harvesting user data. You think Twitter or Tesla aren’t? You think Musk is better than Zuckerberg in that regard?

If that‘s a worry for you, better ditch your TVs, cell phones, cars, smart-watches, refrigerators, etc. and move to a remote island with no internet service.

 

[MulletCork]

What’s your source for specifically what data is being harvested?

Just about every digital device or app you’re using is harvesting user data. You think Twitter or Tesla aren’t? You think Musk is better than Zuckerberg in that regard?

If that‘s a worry for you, better ditch your TVs, cell phones, cars, smart-watches, refrigerators, etc. and move to a remote island with no internet service.

Just read up on it. Sure Twitter is collecting information but Meta is collecting even more. There’s a reason Threads hasn’t been able to launch in Europe