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LukewarmGravity's avatar

As someone who listens to the internet for a living, it's always cool to see something else launch.

Decentralisation is an odd one though. The thing that made twitter great was that everything was all in one place, it's was just filtered by who/what you followed. Using mastodon has been interesting, so it'll be interesting to see how they handle their 'servers' or whatever they'll call them, as all it takes is for someone to stop paying for it to disappear.

But yeah, Musk has had a real 'hold my beer' moment this week. I honestly can't see Twitter being long for this world at this point.

MrTomFTW's avatar

Quitting Facebook and deleting my account just before lockdown did wonders for my mental health (shame the pandemic ruined that haha), and while I'm still on Insta I'd love to get away from Meta. The ick that company gives me is significant.

Buuuuuut I guess I had better try it at the very least. Who know where everyone is going for their Twitter-like fix at this point?

Matt's avatar

I don't see how it will be any different from Twitter. If it looks like a clone it will only encourage the same user behaviour; dunking, baiting, the same debates reycled endlessly, and intrusive AI ads leeching the news and entertainment cycle. I don't see how that has any value or brings anything new to social media.

I quit Twitter about 18 months ago and don't feel like I've missed anything. I've kept up with the news, and that's reassured me I made the right decision. Social media is like an MMO to me - I only have the time and patience for one (and I know that one is bad for me, but we all have our vices, hey).

Dan Thomas's avatar

Pondering this today with Elon robbing me of my multi-account Tweetdeck setup over the weekend. Definitely pushed me into the "time to let it die" mindset for Twitter. As others say, I'm not particularly keen to jump out of the Twitter Frying pan into the Meta Trashfire so I'm looking elsewhere for my shitposting fix. Mastodon is okay but there's a bit too much friction with the servers setup for most people...

Blue sky feels like a warts n all clone of Twitter but I've not taken much of a look at it yet.

All in all, the social media landscape is in a bit of a sorry state at the minute. I might have to force myself into the video centric platforms for my fix 😱

Craig's avatar

Will definitely give it a go to see what the uptake is like, but it's like making new pals when you're 31. It took forever to carefully shape my Twitter feed into the perfect curation of Film Bro Chat and high-brow absurdist dick jokes. Moving from that to "look! someone you used to work with five years ago has an opinion about Glasgow City Council's new bin-collection schedule! Here's another ad for Temu!" makes me feel old. Don't know if I have the time or energy anymore. Instead I'll write my dick jokes on a napkin and yeet them into the sea.

Dave's avatar

The search only searches accounts not content & there is no trending page either.

Craig's avatar

Pretty shocking, if this is the high-point I don't want to be around for the low-point.

Thomas's avatar

I think Twitter has a certain flavour that's different from Instagram's, in that I generally view Insta as quite a nice place and Twitter is squalor. I wouldn't really want it to encroach on Instagram too much. I worry that if they push too hard for this it will make Instagram worse, as I feel like their attempt to compete with and imitate TikTok did

Dave's avatar

I did use twitter (for reading never taking part) but closed my account and deleted it over the weekend. I am probably going to sign up to threads for the same purpose despite it being a meta product which does put me off. I'm going to stick my neck out and say that as long as it actually works well and they aren't launching before it's ready in order to get it out this week, then I think it's going to do well and capture a big audience.

Found this piece intersesting:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/3/23782607/social-web-public-apps-end-reddit-twitter-mastodon

LukewarmGravity's avatar

The web version is up with a countdown.

https://www.threads.net/

The iOS version is available to pre-order with no date given yet for Android.

They've picked a good week to launch now that twitter results wont even show up on google because they can't effectively crawl it.

Dave's avatar

Only launching in the USA and UK this week as well I read. You can get to some of the posts already:

https://www.threads.net/t/CuP48CiS5sx

Dave's avatar

Has gone live early and now open for all. Wondering if the instagram integration on here covers threads or if it will need to be it's own thing.

Rupert's avatar

We’ll be finding this out today! I imagine it’ll likely need a new connection and some customisation at our end (assuming it’s already possible at their end, which it might not be).

Umandraug's avatar

Hmm, I’m not sure. I was gonna check it out, but it appears I can’t do anything without downloading the app. There’s not many social media platforms that I’d download an app for, because I generally prefer access stuff through a browser.

Maybe that’ll change once it gets out of beta, idk.

Rupert's avatar

First impressions: super clean UI, easy optional contact importing so there’s already friendly faces there, slick experience.

I’m already being served stuff at the bottom of my feed that I didn’t opt in to (celebrity influencers like garyvee). Hopefully that’s because I reached the end of the feed, and not the start of the app suggesting things I don’t want and didn’t ask for.

No ads yet. Will be interesting to see when they come in or whether it stays purely as a loss leader to kill Twitter. Basically: will it be a WhatsApp, or a Facebook?

I think we can safely finally delete our Twitter accounts though, which is a relief.

Rupert's avatar

… now I’m only seeing things I haven’t asked to see, and nothing from the people I follow. Feels like a bug.

Matt's avatar

"The Guardian understands that Meta will not be accepting ads on Threads for this year at least."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/06/meta-launches-twitter-rival-threads-in-100-countries

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