Instagram's Threads Surpasses 100 Million Users (theverge.com) 79
Last week, Meta's new Twitter competitor, Threads, was launched to the public and achieved an impressive milestone by surpassing 30 million sign-ups in less than 24 hours. This made Threads the fastest app to reach the 1 million users mark, beating ChatGPT's record. In a recent update, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social media app has now exceeded 100 million users, just days after its initial launch. The Verge reports: Instagram head Adam Mosseri also posted about it, likewise noting that it took just five days to get there. Users aren't just signing up: they're posting, too. As of Thursday, my colleague Alex Heath reported that there have already been more than 95 million posts and 190 million likes shared on the app.
That said, Threads is still in its infancy, and we'll have to wait and see if it captures the same cultural cachet that Twitter once did. Meta isn't specifically targeting trying to replace Twitter, according to Instagram head Adam Mosseri, and the company isn't going to actively encourage politics and hard news on the platform, but it could end up being the place people go for a conversation-based social media platform. And while Meta "couldn't be more psyched" about how the launch week has gone, "we don't even know if this thing is retentive yet," Mosseri said.
Although the numbers aren't directly comparable, as of last November Twitter had around 260 million monetizable daily active users, per a tweet from owner Elon Musk at the time. More recently, The Wall Street Journal reports it's been telling advertisers that it has around 535 million monetizable monthly active users.
That said, Threads is still in its infancy, and we'll have to wait and see if it captures the same cultural cachet that Twitter once did. Meta isn't specifically targeting trying to replace Twitter, according to Instagram head Adam Mosseri, and the company isn't going to actively encourage politics and hard news on the platform, but it could end up being the place people go for a conversation-based social media platform. And while Meta "couldn't be more psyched" about how the launch week has gone, "we don't even know if this thing is retentive yet," Mosseri said.
Although the numbers aren't directly comparable, as of last November Twitter had around 260 million monetizable daily active users, per a tweet from owner Elon Musk at the time. More recently, The Wall Street Journal reports it's been telling advertisers that it has around 535 million monetizable monthly active users.
Shadow Accounts? (Score:2)
I hear FB is known for "shadow accounts" for those people that do not (or refuse to) have an actual FB.
I wonder if that "shadow" concept applies to Instagram and Threads.
Just asking for someone that could care less about having any social media accounts at all/
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The shadow accounts are not visible to the public, but they affect your social web and the recommendations generated from it and the advertising aimed at you.
If you have any kind of traceable connection to a Facebook user, between that and all the databases they own or license, there's a shadow profile of you on there... probably waiting to be stolen by hackers who don't have the resources to do the data collection and mining, but could find a use for the final report.
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Is anyone actually falling for this? (Score:2)
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It seems to be taking a toll on Elon. https://www.thedailybeast.com/... [thedailybeast.com]
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At this point, Zuck and Musk need to have a big PPV event. They clearly love duking it out publicly so much they're going to be willing to completely destroy themselves, their reputations (such as they are), and possibly, if it comes down to it, their companies. The will-they/wont-they of their erstwhile hate-romance is getting to one of the funniest public feuds among the "I'll never have that much money in my life" crowd of the modern age.
Cage match. I seriously think it's the best for everyone.
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Guillotines at 10 paces!
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monetizable daily active users
Which is really all that matters.
Also please use the correct technical term, "cattle", not some bland euphemism.
No way to unsubscribe (Score:5, Insightful)
all board the hype train!
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I thought you could unsubscribe by deleting your Instagram account...or was that some different project.
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You can unsubscribe anyway. It just gives you a warning to say that your underlying profile is actually an instagram profile and won't be deleted. The whole "you can't delete it" was one of the dumbest lack of understandings that I've seen in the media. Deactivate your threads profile from instagram and you effectively cease existing on threads.
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Yes there is. Deactivating the Threads account is an option. It results in your being effectively gone from the platform. What there is no way to do is to delete your account because ... it's an Instagram account. And if you can live without your Instagram then there is a way to delete it as well.
Twitter traffic is tanking (Score:5, Informative)
According to Cloudflare, traffic to Twitter is plummeting [twitter.com] since Threads went live [theguardian.com].
More hilariously, the guy who was banned from Twitter [cnbc.com] because he was exercising his free speech has opened his account on Threads [mashable.com].
As a side note, Musk is still not allowing non-registered viewers to read all posts. I have 12 accounts I follow for Ukraine and every single one of them has the overlay that I need to create an account. Also, in those cases where I can see a tweet, such as above, comments are not visible. So much for Mr. Free Speech [twitter.com].
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Twitter doesn't believe in free speech, it believes in engagement. Why anyone would think any social media company would be different is beyond me.
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But Elon said that Twitter is a free speech platform!
Then he decided "cis" as a slur... Oh right.
Re:Twitter traffic is tanking (Score:5, Interesting)
He's almost as unconvincing a liar as Putin, though in the abstract neither Threads nor Twitter are sites for the privacy conscious.
Oddly I've seen no decline (Score:3, Insightful)
I've got two Twitter accounts (one general, one for programming) and I've not really seen any decline in people I normally follow.
I think a lot are dual-posting?
Also looking at that chart, it doens't seem like a "massive decline", they had some kind of odd peak, it want back down to normal, and then it did dip from there somewhat as Threads launched...
I figure competition is good, though I personally would not want to join Meta's new text training data effort, I wish those who have decided to help the colle
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I've seen a few accounts leave Twitter in the past year. Some for Mastodon, some for Blue Sky (still waiting for an invite), and some just ditching the micro-blogging concept entirely.
Now we have Threads too. It's a pain in the arse to keep track of everyone I'm interested in.
That's why I just stick to Twitter (Score:1)
Now we have Threads too. It's a pain in the arse to keep track of everyone I'm interested in.
I agree. I understand if people want to go off and find something new, but there's just no way I can keep on top of several social media platforms. I really just want the Zeitgeist so Twitter alone is enough for me... there continue to be plenty of people I find interesting posting there.
Also fundamentally I try to avoid giving data to Google and Meta if possible (not fully succeeding of course, not sure that is po
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I've got two Twitter accounts (one general, one for programming) and I've not really seen any decline in people I normally follow.
I think a lot are dual-posting?
People who post for their jobs (journalist, influences etc) depends on it probably are dual posting, and will probably keep doing that until it's clear which platform.
I never actually had a twitter account and would just check a few people I know whenever I wanted to see their take on something. I know a couple accounts that left (like popehat) but others are still there. Though I've stopped visiting twitter completley once they put up the login wall.
Congrats! (Score:4, Funny)
Congrats, Privacy Rapists!
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Here ya go [slashdot.org], easily triggered Meta[stasize] employee.
Meta's new Twitter competitor ... (Score:2, Funny)
I hope this thing completely and utterly eviscerates Twitter for the simple reason that I want to thoroughly enjoy the schadenfreude of hearing Elon Musk whine about it like a little bitch.
Musk gonna Musk (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/07/elon-musk-mark-zuckerberg-dick-measuring-contest
He called Zuckerberg a "cuck" and then challenged him to a "literal dick measuring contest"
Re:Musk gonna Musk (Score:5, Funny)
You win by default, Elon. You're always the biggest dick.
You got to ask what he's distracting from (Score:4, Informative)
I always thought it was strange we let people like him have that much power just because he happened to blunder into a ton of money. It's weird how some people are perfectly okay with having individuals they can destroy your life at the drop of a hat but freak out over a government's modest regulation of business and the environment
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When musk does something stupid like this it's because he's trying to distract the media from something he did. Like when he's sexually harassed that woman with a horse.
Please don't pretend he's playing 4D chess here. Musk has a long history of doing and saying insanely stupid stuff without it needing to be a coverup.
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Sometimes Musk lucks into distracting the media from something he might want to distract them from, but the guy pretty much just gets blasted, then spouts off at the mouth constantly. It only registers when it's against some other big-money mover, but the man can't shut his yap-hole. He's like that dude at the bar that gets drunk and rants like a lunatic every night, except he's doing it via online means and interviews. Constant bragging, belittling others between the brags, and a whole lot of WTF thrown in
Everywhere - even on slashdot (Score:1, Offtopic)
The quality of online discourse has declined so much...
The quality of discourse sucks everywhere, even on slashdot.
Take a look at the recent article [slashdot.org] about Avi Loeb claiming to find extraterrestrial technology, and take note of the comments.
Avi Loeb's blog [medium.com] is an easy read, he lays out the reasoning for his hypothesis, he shows why he rejects common alternate explanations, and notes quite clearly that it is an hypothesis that has testable predictions, and that he intends to test them(*).
Typical science stuff, and gets right to the heart of the scientific method:
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and there's no known astronomical process that would separate the nickel from the iron
Oh that's cool- I didn't know nickel and iron had the same density.
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This is like when people have to (Score:4, Interesting)
...choose between Oracle and Microsoft.
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...choose between Oracle and Microsoft.
Pretty much this. It saddens me to see people leaving one personal information suck for an even more powerful personal information suck. Sigh.
What is the appeal of another twitter knockoff? (Score:1)
There are, at least, seven twitter knockoffs already. Who needs another? Especially when the latest knockoff is from a company known for spying, censorship, and working hand-in-hand with intel agencies. And especially especially when twitter has largely stopped the censorship, which was what brought about all the knockoffs in the first place.
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especially when twitter has largely stopped the censorship, which was what brought about all the knockoffs in the first place.
Stopped the censorship? https://www.theverge.com/2023/... [theverge.com]
Elon now claims the word "cis" is a slur https://www.forbes.com/sites/k... [forbes.com]
More censorship https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
This one is pretty funny. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/29... [cnn.com]
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Do, please, provide some sources of your own.
I'm sure we could all do with a laugh.
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Read up the twitter files.
Certainly, people will not leave twitter, to sign up for a Facebook service, to avoid censorship. Facebook is notorious for censorship.
So what is the advantage of threads over twitter?
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Most people only hear about the ones pushed by the PR departments.
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How many are bots? (Score:1)
Instagram Threads (Score:2)
It's mobile only (Score:4, Interesting)
So it's useless to me
And no, Android emulation for windows or Samsung DEX are not acceptable options
If it doesn't run in a browser, I'm not interested
Re: It's mobile only (Score:2)
Ha ha! Really? Not interested in joining any of the friendface things, but it is amusing to me that they are going from aggressively pushing their apps to being app-only.
Good. They should build the wall around their garden ever higher. And soundproof it.
The solution to the social media problem is (Score:2)
More social media. Basically the same solution as gun murders and pit bull attacks. People getting mauled by pit bulls in your town? More people should have pit bulls. Social media catalyzing humanity to denigrate and destroy itself...probably need more social media to combat that.
Just Securing Their Usernames (Score:5, Insightful)
When people are voting for their favorite singer on The Voice, then we might have something here.
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Yep. And the overwhelming majority of initial registrations were brands, not even people.
But that's beside the point. Systems like this rely on the network effect. What keeps people on Twitter is that people talk on Twitter and can read each other's shit on Twitter. If every man and their dog has a Threads account (even unused) then that already is a major barrier to adoption gone making it a very real alternative to Twitter.
It's what made Facebook take out Myspace. They started targeted and small. They exp
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Yep. And the overwhelming majority of initial registrations were brands, not even people.
A hundred million brands?
We'll have to wait and see if people will stick around, maybe it's shit and nobody ever logs on again. But unlike Mastodon and BlueSky they have a huge head start.
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Yep. And the overwhelming majority of initial registrations were brands, not even people.
A hundred million brands?
Sure. Why not?
I won't pretend to know the numbers (or try to make myself a 60-second Google search faux expert on the numbers), but 100 million brands does not seem at all farfetched to me. This isn't the 1970s when branding took years of hard work and constant carpet-bombing of newspapers, radio/tv ads, and telephone books, and was therefore out of reach unless your company was already fairly successful.
How many small-business / commercial websites exist in 2023?
How many "influencers" exist in 2023?
How man
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Reminds me of this classic TheOnion article
https://www.theonion.com/consu... [theonion.com]
Anyone remember Google+? (Score:2)
That too started out with a bang but it soon fizzled out and ended on a whimper. I remember all the anticipation and "invite only" signup. Then we all got accounts...and...poof. Seemed like there was nothing to do.
They had this great idea called Circles where you could create different groups of friends and decide which posts to share with which group. It seemed promising but just never took off.
I think part of the reason was that people already had a social network (Facebook) and didn't want to go to the t
Waiting. (Score:1)
Honest (Score:2)
I have a Twitter account but don't really use it (once a few months doesn't count as using). Honestly, if Threads was available in the EU, I would start it once (no need for a new account, already have Instagram) to see what is about and then don't touch it anytime soon. That would count as a new user.
Loved this meme... (Score:1)
Watching 2 Villains Battle It Out (Score:2)
Yet, it is watching two evil men go at each other. Sort of like watching the DeSantis vs Trump fight.
You can take a little bit of joy watching one of them hurt the other, but you can't root for that. You know one evil man will emerge and be coming for the country.
Two turds wrestling in the bottom of a cesspool.
The funniest part (Score:2, Insightful)
...is watching all the Elon-Hate surge through the media and their simps.
The BBC naturally, their "tech" reporter was absolutely humiliated on live tv.
Now they all cheerlead for the same Mark Zuckerberg that they pilloried for FBs rapacious use of private data and whom they excoriated for allowing the Orange Baboon's campaign to use data the same exact way Pres Obama's campaign had the cycle before (have we completely forgotten Cambridge Analytica now?) - solely because he's going against Musk.
I think Musk
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Musk can be both a contemptible human being with awful ethics AND the guy who focused brilliant people in a couple of industries into generating some major advances. And he is. Just because I enjoy him looking like a man-child as he fails with Twitter due to his own self-owning stupidity doesn't mean I don't acknowledge the advances brought by SpaceX and Tesla.
You're the one insisting on a simple, polarised political interpretation of it all, and given your choice of insults and subject matter, we can all
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While I enjoy your echoing of the simplistic "with me or against me" stupidity we used to only believe Bush II performed (ironic that you take the same stance?), let me honestly review your points:
- I've personally worked for 2 police depts (I was a park ranger for a number of years). I love cops, I feel they have one of the hardest, least appreciated jobs in the world, basically take shit from people nearly all day, and can only socialize with each other because they're too blue collar for the white colla
There was a movie called Threads (Score:2)
It was a sort of British version of The Day After
Are those all users, or... (Score:2)
....did they just import the existing Meta userlist??