[HN Gopher] Instagram Threads: The problem with the "everything ...
___________________________________________________________________
Instagram Threads: The problem with the "everything for everyone"
approach
Author : viggybala
Score : 67 points
Date : 2023-07-12 19:19 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thisisunpacked.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thisisunpacked.substack.com)
| jb12 wrote:
| I'm sure meta knows how to make a social product successful, the
| "everything for everyone" approach has earned them billions of
| dollars in revenue over twenty years now.
| viscanti wrote:
| They're very familiar with TikTok and how many people are
| moving over to use that. Their bet is that they can figure out
| how to highlight the most interesting content for each user and
| that content would be better than the vast majority of user
| curation through follows.
| SCUSKU wrote:
| That only worked after they started off being exclusively a
| social network on college campuses. To the author's point,
| Threads needs to find a "subset of users [that] love and
| repeatedly [use Threads]".
|
| Once they find Thread's specific purpose, then they can start
| to cater that to a broader audience and find true success, imo.
| threeseed wrote:
| > Once they find Thread's specific purpose
|
| They already have that purpose. It's to make a better
| Twitter.
|
| And given the significant drop in Twitter traffic it's
| working.
| threeseed wrote:
| > Why Meta's "Everything For Everyone" Approach Is Unlikely To
| Succeed
|
| 100m users and fastest growing social network in history.
|
| And that's without EU, no desktop or iPad apps and missing key
| features like chronological timeline.
|
| Sure seems like it's succeeding to me.
| troupo wrote:
| Facebook has to convert those numbers they got through
| borderline deceptive patterns into actual active users.
| rvz wrote:
| Exactly. _The fastest growing social network and product
| adoption in history._ With 100M users in 5 days. Already
| destroyed OpenAI 's record and eclipsing the so-called
| 'Fediverse' 10 times over. At this point; they _are_ the new
| Fediverse.
|
| But I do remember many hysterical comments about 'Meta is
| dying' and the regular 'Instagram algorithm bad' complaining
| and finally the insane calls to 'Fire Mark Zuckerberg' nonsense
| here.
|
| Now this should definitively prove which I have already said
| before, that the poorly aged and the constant calls and
| deranged predictions of the death of Meta Platforms, has been
| _greatly_ exaggerated.
|
| A magnificent and successful recovery with the stock up over
| 200% since the low of $89.
| welshwelsh wrote:
| The 100M stat means nothing to me because of integration with
| Instagram. It's not like they cultivated an audience of 100M
| people in 5 days.
|
| Suppose Instagram added the ability to create text threads in
| addition to photos, except they did this as an Instagram
| feature instead of a separate app. A week later, we find that
| 10% of Instagram users viewed one of these threads. Would
| that be significant?
| ypeterholmes wrote:
| Twitter has the same "problem" but has been wildly successful...
| The odd thing about twitter is that nobody could ever figure out
| what is really was. Still haven't.
| bl_valance wrote:
| Threads will be good for brands since they won't have to worry
| about controversial content, though eventually everything is
| going to be bland content if you are being censored to what Meta
| thinks is "appropriate". Though could be interesting if they
| pivot towards a more topics/community model.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| What kind of content are people looking for that they can't
| find on a Meta-filtered feed? Pretty sure I'll get to see all
| my finance, programming and shitposting content I get on
| Twitter in there, what am I missing out on?
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| I actually think Twitter is pretty bland because it's a lot of
| old topics being rehashed with no new information: vaccines,
| gender identity, and the culture wars. The only reason people
| are talking about these things is because of Elon. There is no
| current event that precipitated them.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > vaccines, gender identity, and the culture wars. The only
| reason people are talking about these things is because of
| Elon. There is no current event that precipitated them.
|
| Gender identity politics are tied to a rather high frequency
| stream of current events; similar to racial politics in the
| 1950s-1960s, as are the culture wars of which they are a
| major current battleground (again, just as racial politics
| were in the 1950s-1960s.)
|
| For vaccines, the main driving force for the issue's current
| attention is RFK, Jr.'s Presidential campaign, which is
| certainly a current event.
|
| If you think Elon is the reason people are talking about
| those things and not current events, you need to crawl out of
| whatever filter bubble is shielding you from current events
| (or just stopping arguing based on your supposed knowledge of
| them if you are content in that bubble.)
| revscat wrote:
| [flagged]
| coolbreezetft22 wrote:
| Why is any content that wouldn't be censored considered
| "bland"? How much of the HN top page at any given time would be
| considered 'inappropriate' by meta and censored? Is the content
| on HN bland?
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| ..Instagram will happily show its users an almost endless feed
| of softcore pornography?
| charcircuit wrote:
| As opposed to Twitter happily showing users an almost endless
| feed of hardcore pornography?
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| Yeah, I mean, that's the primary difference. Well, that and
| the ambient level of Nazism is much higher now on Twitter.
| I was more reacting to the parents comment about Meta only
| allowing "bland" content on Threads. Instagram is a far cry
| from bland or family friendly, even if people can't post
| full nudity or whatever.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| But then turn around and ban actual, non-porn sex ed
| accounts.
| threeseed wrote:
| Only if you subscribe to it. And it's no different to what
| you see on Netflix etc.
| jb12 wrote:
| Reality TV has been softcore pornography for about a decade
| now, advertisers have no issue with it
| nbow wrote:
| I think that threads is gonna be more successful than people
| realize. bluesky and mastodon are both still just novelties
| because it's neigh impossible to migrate social media audiences.
| Even if Oprah has a mastodon that's not really gonna do much of
| the platform is fragmented and empty.
|
| Personally, I am enjoying using threads. Insta has been my only
| real social media presence for a while now and there are people
| in my feed already posting entertaining stuff. It means threads
| gets a huge headstart.
|
| In addition to this, Meta dwarfs Twitter as an organization both
| in numbers and technical talent, especially after Musk's immature
| firing spree. I don't think any emergency service accounts will
| be getting rate limited on their threads account.
|
| Meta smells blood in the water and is doing what any good mega
| corporation does and capitalizing on it.
| boc wrote:
| Once people realize that they just need to go follow their
| Twitter follows on Threads (instead of just their insta
| followers), Threads starts feeling like a way cleaner version
| of Twitter. And that's before they add most of the features
| like hashtags, trending, follow topics, DMs, etc.
|
| I thought I would get burned out on Threads but it's still
| keeping my interest.
| skilled wrote:
| I think you are completely wrong and in a few days Threads will
| be forgotten just like Vision Pro was. Hard to take opinion's
| seriously when they've been clearly influenced by the media
| machine.
|
| Nobody is going to give up their real estate on Twitter just
| because Instagram added a "create a text-based Insta account"
| button.
|
| Let that sink in...
| ChatGTP wrote:
| People really just like the drama, you can tell with the
| "smells blood in the water" bit.
| boc wrote:
| I would agree if A) Threads didn't just add 100M users
| overnight, and B) if Twitter wasn't a spam-filled shitshow.
|
| It's undeniable that Twitter is a failing product. Their
| advertisements are literal basement-tier garbage... I see the
| type of ads that normally fill your spam inbox. The blue
| checkmarks seem like they're all Elon sycophants and thus you
| are forced to interact with a bunch of weirdos as the top
| replies to any post. It just feels like walking into a
| Walmart at 1am, vs Threads which feels like Target on a
| weekday.
| watwut wrote:
| I kinda like ads I am getting on twitter now. For me, it
| gives goofy t-shirts mostly and some goofy mugs.
| skilled wrote:
| "100M users" ... okay then.
|
| Like I said, it will be forgotten in a few days so enjoy
| the wave because it is coming down.
|
| And mind you, I have zero investment in either of the
| platforms. I just happen to be able to have a neutral
| discernment of the situation.
| callalex wrote:
| "Threads will be forgotten just like Vision Pro was"
|
| This statement makes absolutely no sense, considering you are
| using the past tense to refer to a product that hasn't even
| been built and released yet.
| skilled wrote:
| It makes perfect sense. I predicted Vision Pro will get cut
| off and forgotten and now I am doing the same for Threads.
|
| It's only my opinion, don't get worked up about it.
| callalex wrote:
| (Off-topic warning) the speed of your reply implies to me
| that you have some way of being directly notified of HN
| replies. What software do you use for that and do you
| like it?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| (Not who you asked. I do not use this but have seen it
| referenced.)
|
| https://www.hnreplies.com/
|
| For what it's worth, I will sometimes just check the
| "threads" link at the top of the page and happen to see a
| response minutes ago (or less) to my comments. It's
| possible that happened here.
| callalex wrote:
| I'm not worked up, just confused. What has Vision Pro, an
| unreleased product, been cut off and forgotten from?
| dahwolf wrote:
| "100M signups in five days is impressive at first glance.
| However, if you do some quick math, you will see that 100M
| signups (defined by install the app + click a button that says
| signup with your Instagram account) out of 3.8 billion monthly
| active Meta users is 3% of their users"
|
| Speaking of math, MAU means active at least once per month, which
| can be as meaningless as being triggered by a notification. Also,
| a month is longer than a week.
|
| The 3% signup percentage is nonsense because only 1/4th of a
| month has passed. Even after a full month it's a guessed number
| because you have to know how often the "sign up" banner was
| served (and seen) to actually active users.
|
| Calling a 1 million new users PER HOUR "not a slam dunk".
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Alot of nothing in this post. Or alot of nothing that hasn't
| already been said in the last week.
|
| If you think twitter is only text based where have you been for
| like 10 years.
|
| The real problem right now is threads has weak discoverability,
| terrible algorithm modding (like, telling it what you want to see
| and not....how do you get rid of accounts, mute? hide?), and lack
| of quality content that can't already be found elsewhere. It's
| just an alsoran. DOA after people stop signing up to it out of
| curiosity.
| shmatt wrote:
| TikTok is everything for literally everyone. And its done well
| because their algorithm feels like magic. There is no problem
| with that approach if its done well. Still to early to rate the
| Threads algorithm
|
| Everyone should listen to the Reply All episode about the TikTok
| algorithm, its pretty mind blowing
|
| https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/z3h78d6
| kornork wrote:
| "Twitter censored content at the request of the Turkish
| government"
|
| What are we expecting here? If there's a legal requirement
| Twitter has to follow, vs getting banned, what should they do?
|
| Do we believe for a second that Meta/Threads will do anything
| differently?
| viggybala wrote:
| Analysis piece that talk about what makes a successful social
| network, why Meta's "Everything For Everyone" approach is
| unlikely to submit and how Threads can pivot to be successful.
| [deleted]
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Twitter already tried communities, and it didn't work out too
| well. The problem is it doesn't work with tweets, as in tweets
| are too separate.
|
| Fb is either gonna pivot into full Reddit or they need to invent
| some hybrid thing that won't be a Twitter competitor anymore.
| They will likely find out why Twitter had difficulty in getting
| more users to use it
| pasttense01 wrote:
| "In addition, having real identity as a feature could enable
| building more trustworthy communities that could go beyond online
| discussions.."
|
| No. It's just not safe to provide your real identity on the
| internet except in narrow situations (such as friends and family
| or businesses you are buying goods and services from). Problems
| arise with employers, crazies, law enforcement... The last
| situation I was just reading about was: "Reddit Asks Court to
| Protect Users Right to Anonymous Speech in Piracy Case"
|
| https://torrentfreak.com/reddit-asks-court-to-protect-users-...
| kneebonian wrote:
| 3 Rules on the internet
|
| 1. Never give out real personal info
|
| 2. Don't believe anything you see on the internet
|
| 3. Everyone woman on the internet is a dude and every teenager
| is an FBI agent.
|
| Everything went to hell when we stopped living by those 3
| rules.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Given what Meta has done to Instagram, and hell, for that matter
| Facebook*, why would I even take a look at "Threads".
|
| Blog people. Blog.
|
| * with its ridiculously overloaded stream of sponsored content
| and quasi-pornographic Reels (which would get blocked if I posted
| it to my timeline but seems to be just fine on their compete-
| with-TikTok Reels platform. It's not that I object to
| pornographic or quasi-pornographic content. It's that I object to
| it being shoved into my feed when I'm looking at photos of my
| friends beach vacation, or pictures of nephews and nieces, right?
| Stay in your goddam lane Facebook.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > quasi-pornographic Reels
|
| Meh you're just telling on yourself, here. Mark them as not-
| interested. My feed is all scale models and noodle recipes.
| ScottEvtuch wrote:
| I hear this defense a lot, but isn't it kind of problematic
| that a platform makes you go out of your way to tell them you
| prefer not to see soft-core porn? I didn't even know TikTok
| had a "Not Interested" button until someone told me in
| person. It's completely hidden.
|
| I've personally seen this come up on a lot of different
| social media apps that feature video content. They all
| initially throw a bunch of vaguely pornographic content at
| you to start with and continue doing so unless you keep
| opting out for long enough. I kinda wonder how many users
| never make it past the initial onslaught and just assume the
| entire platform is like that.
| [deleted]
| ezfe wrote:
| > quasi-pornographic Reels
|
| All my reels are puppies and memes so...not sure what you're
| doing to your Instagram
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| I've heard this a lot on both sides, but have been on the
| sidelines until about 2 months ago.
|
| I finally caved and got back onto Facebook after nearly 10
| years off.
|
| The first night I went in, added all of the people in my
| local BNI chapter and everyone I knew from my gym. My goal
| was to focus exclusively on local community building and
| staying in touch with people I'd probably see again soon.
|
| I closed out of the app for the night, came back the next
| morning, and my timeline was 20% women in a jungle setting
| taking off their clothing. We counted, it was 1 in 5 posts.
|
| Unless they already had a shadow profile for me, this seems
| to be some sort of default for my demographic (gender and
| age). I can't imagine "small business and gym" would yield
| this outcome.
|
| It has taken almost a month to eliminate actual soft
| pornography from my timeline by reporting it. But still my
| timeline is full of sexually suggestive and offensive
| material.
|
| In fact, my timeline is only about 33% my local community.
| Everything else is a hodgepodge of random garbage content
| getting jammed into my feed. From DIY pro-tips that'll get
| you killed to sexually suggestive memes.
|
| I wish I could turn off recommended content.
|
| It's confirmed my reason for being reluctant to rejoin Meta
| for the last 10 years. I've almost caved and purchased the
| Oculus, but I'm back in the "nope, no Meta" camp. Facebook is
| a downright awful experience, both technically, socially, and
| mentally.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > It has taken almost a month to eliminate actual soft
| pornography from my timeline by reporting it. But still my
| timeline is full of sexually suggestive and offensive
| material.
|
| Are you _reporting_ it? Why? Just because _you_ don 't want
| to see it doesn't mean that no one does.
|
| What you should be doing is a) not engaging; b) marking it
| as "not interested".
| [deleted]
| pixl97 wrote:
| >Blog people. Blog.
|
| Because you, me, and Mr McGee read blogs. Meanwhile a billion
| other people thumb through bite size 'info-oids' at levels of
| ADHD never before seen and don't put up enough objection to the
| half nude crap to make a difference.
| _dain_ wrote:
| is this meant to be an argument against blogs? why would you
| even want the latter audience
| pixl97 wrote:
| Well, because if you're an adtech company you'd want to
| make money.
| fundad wrote:
| Hasn't Twitter moved on to becoming the everything app like
| WeChat for video like YouTube?
|
| Does Threads have to compete with Twitter for users or
| advertisers? I think people want to promote their YouTube channel
| and Threads has a lot of first-party tracking data.
| dmoy wrote:
| > Hasn't Twitter moved on to becoming the everything app like
| WeChat for video like YouTube?
|
| I am having difficulty parsing this. What do you mean?
| fundad wrote:
| X the everything app. It's very different from Threads
| maxfurman wrote:
| I think it's sarcasm
| yankput wrote:
| Not directly related but... Twitter is really so bad lately
|
| Musk has not just tipped his fingers in the politics; he just
| went full-on hard right; it resembles 4chan now more than
| anything
|
| while the site itself just plainly doesn't work anymore, and
| things now randomly fail
|
| 4chan is fine for what it is; but there is a reason why you have
| just scammy porn and NFT ads on 4chan
|
| on the other hand I now tried Trump's Pravda [1], it seems it
| works fine, but all the ads there are for some scammy "patriotic"
| insurance companies. It's a direction to go, just maybe not worth
| the 44 billion.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda
| BasedAnon wrote:
| all of the time
| axlee wrote:
| > 100M signups in five days is impressive at first glance.
| However, if you do some quick math, you will see that 100M
| signups (defined by install the app + click a button that says
| signup with your Instagram account) out of 3.8 billion monthly
| active Meta users is 3% of their users, i.e. 3 out of 100 Meta
| users did a low effort action (one-click signup) in the midst of
| a huge product news cycle.
|
| Threads isn't available in Europe (~500M population), Meta MAU !=
| Instagram MAU, and 5 days isn't 30 days.
| burnished wrote:
| Isnt that figure more like a proxy for 'current active users'?
| Comparing the number of days doesn't seem correct
| duped wrote:
| I'm a meta user and can't login because I don't have an
| instagram account. I wouldn't hate checking out threads but I
| can't really be bothered to download another app, sign up, then
| go to this app, and login. Seems like a waste.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Ah, but you don't have to. Just use your Facebook account to
| sign into Instagram and then sign into Threads with that.
| Facebook will thank you for saving them the smallest of
| effort it takes to connect your identities.
| [deleted]
| suction wrote:
| [dead]
| motoxpro wrote:
| This isn't a critique of Threads, this a commentary on the nature
| of social graphs and different identities in different spaces.
| People use IG different than they use Twitter, FB, LinkedIn, etc.
|
| You could get the same experience on Twitter by following Dora
| the Explorer, Procter and Gamble, your uncle, and Brian Chesky
| but you have chosen to have a specific experience in that app by
| curating your feed.
|
| A better example, port LinkedIn's graph to Snapchat and it would
| seem like absolute nonsense.
|
| IG ported a visual social graph to a text based app, this, by
| definition, isn't going to produce the most optimal experience.
| Thats 100% fine though, you'll realize who is good at posting
| text content, follow them, you'll unfollow the people that are
| not good, etc.
|
| This is why TikTok was interesting in the first place because it
| removed the curation step and created an interest graph instead
| of a social one. What the poster is talking about is the friction
| inheirent to using a social graph as a proxy for an interest
| graph.
|
| "I love when you talk about tech but I don't care at all about
| your dog."
| weebull wrote:
| I agree, but it allowed meta to say they had a bajillion users
| from day one, and make the news. Nothing worse than an empty
| social network to make people run away.
| motoxpro wrote:
| Totally. I think they did the exact right thing. Brilliant
| strategy because not only does it kick start the network, but
| it introduces a entirely new group of people to text based
| social media that never tried/were into Twitter.
| coolbreezetft22 wrote:
| The way I used twitter (and now threads) is just by navigating
| directly to the URL of the accounts I want to read. I'd
| discover other accounts I'd want to "follow" usually via re-
| tweets.
|
| In this way Threads is going to be the exact same experience
| for me as long as the same accounts I read on Twitter are
| posting on Threads.
| haolez wrote:
| I get this a lot on Twitter. There is a very interesting tech
| account that I follow that half the time is complaining about
| British politics. It's really frustrating, since I don't want
| to ditch the tech posts
| yieldcrv wrote:
| agreed, pre-social media people "stayed on brand" because
| thats all you ever saw of them
|
| nobody needs to know their favorite stoic keynote speaker
| does anything else
| cglong wrote:
| I was briefly in a Facebook A/B test that automatically
| categorized every post by everyone. I then had the option to
| "Unfollow Alice for posts about Politics". It was _glorious_
| , and I always wonder why they never released that broadly.
| rtsil wrote:
| Probably because it reduced engagement.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That, plus hours after deployment it would hit US
| national news, and hours later you'd have politicians
| accusing Meta/Facebook of bias because their political
| spam was correctly labeled as political spam, but the
| opposite side's politician's cooking recipes were NOT
| labeled as political spam, which reeks of favorism, bias,
| and is anti-democratic in several different ways.
| labster wrote:
| Probably making all their users happier and healthier
| decreased engagement.
| abraae wrote:
| I marvel at the resources available to FB that they could
| release such a far reaching capability as an experiment.
| motoxpro wrote:
| Half response/half commentary:
|
| I think it just comes down to if you see yourself as an
| entertainer or not.
|
| Social media based on a social graph forces you to be niche
| because you have to be that proxy for interest. i.e. it's.
| better to have three people who post about tech, British
| politics, and Seinfeld separately than one person who posts
| about Seinfeld one day, politics the next and tech the next
| because it is impossible for me to curate my feed correctly.
|
| Ironically, If you ONLY posted about the tech of all of the
| political scenes in Seinfeld that included British actors,
| that would be fine.
|
| If you don't see yourself as an entertainer, or put another
| way, if you're not trying to build an audience, then you can
| bring your whole self or post about whatever you're
| interested and passionate about knowing that people will be
| upset when you don't post what they are interested in and
| that you won't build as big of a following.
| hdivocic wrote:
| A 50% hit rate is pretty good.
|
| There is a widespread tendency on HN to complain about
| various forms of noise/distraction. Whether it is the
| unusability of the web without an ad blocker, or the
| apparently impossible task of using Google these days (too
| many useless links returned).
|
| I strongly feel that, unless you have some acknowledged
| difficulty in dealing with extraneous information, it is just
| not reasonable to expect the world's data to be presented to
| you prefiltered, "on a plate". If you do have a recognized
| problem with information overload, you'll have to accept that
| some info sources are not for you. This is not ableism.
| phailhaus wrote:
| There's the similar but related problem of "I'm more interested
| in creative posts today, but there's no way for me to register
| that intent". So what ends up happening on sites like TikTok is
| that you have to start very quickly swiping through your feed
| until something related pops up, and pausing for too long will
| undo your progress.
| delecti wrote:
| Instagram's "explore" page works pretty excellently for this;
| each post on the grid there is essentially a separate feed.
| For example on mine the top several posts are: queer art,
| Zelda, car crash videos, less specific art, 40k memes,
| politics relevant to me, cat memes, and so on. Each of those
| is something that Instagram has good reason to think I'd
| like, and the posts stay fairly consistent with the vibe of
| the first post as I scroll through any of those feeds.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _So what ends up happening on sites like TikTok is that you
| have to start very quickly swiping through your feed until
| something related pops up, and pausing for too long will undo
| your progress._
|
| FYI, TikTok also has explicit like/dislike signals. For
| example, you can love posts, or long-press the video and
| choose "Not Interested".
| nomel wrote:
| From what I've seen, loving a post has less impact that
| watching a video loop a few times. It appears that view
| time is the strongest signal, which seems logical.
| phailhaus wrote:
| And yet, that's so frustrating because sometimes I'm just
| curious! I really hate platforms that implicitly use view
| time as a signal because I have to be aware of that and
| make sure I don't spend too long on certain kinds of
| content. It forces me to "keep moving or else it'll learn
| something wrong about me", but since it's implicit
| there's no real way to know what it learned.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Commenting and liking a post is even stronger
| phailhaus wrote:
| Right, but what does "dislike" or "not interested" do? It's
| not that I hate it completely, but it's just not what I
| want to look at _right now_. So instead, I 'm going to
| swipe through until I find some related stuff, like that,
| then hope the algorithm picks up on it. And then tomorrow,
| I have to get it to unlearn that because I'm looking for
| something else.
| leonidasv wrote:
| The biggest mistake of Threads was allowing videos and photos
| from day one. It became a dumpster of Instagram reposts, almost
| no new content. And the feed algorithm is very, very bad.
| elforce002 wrote:
| I called it a while back. Threads is going to canibalize ig.
| The "friendly" approach is basically for brands.
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