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Notes -
Who's on Threads?
99% of social media products fail, even those from established and successful tech (even social media) companies. In the last two years alone Clubhouse and BeReal have been extremely well-funded, seen a surge in users, and then fallen into seemingly terminal decline. The default assumption should be that Threads fails.
Still, it's an interesting product. The most interesting thing about Threads is that it isn't really trying to be Twitter. It has no web app and doesn't seem designed for Twitter's main use cases (breaking news/announcements of various kinds, and anonymous short-form internet discussion and meme propagation through networks of people who follow each other with mutual interests).
Threads has no web app and can't be used signed-out, and unlike both Reddit and Twitter the majority of normal users won't be anonymous, because their Threads account will be linked to their Instagram account. Of course creating a secondary anonymous Instagram account to use with Threads is a possibility, but it's certainly more hoops to jump through than on Twitter.
'Following' on Threads isn't particularly important. You can do it, and you'll definitely see someone's content, but most of the feed is 'suggested content' that the algorithm thinks you'll like. On Twitter, you build your social network and it sometimes recommends good accounts to follow. On Threads, you start with a default pool of content that is maybe 20% your Instagram friends and 80% top trending, and then over time the algorithm corrects to maybe 20% your Instagram friends, 10% top trending, and 70% algorithmic dopamine rush.
Threads is trying to be the TikTok of text.
This strikes me as potentially a far more compelling business case than Twitter, whether or not Zuck actually pulls it off. Reddit, Twitter, various forums and so on are full of vast amounts of compelling short-form text content - jokes, short stories, news, memes, smut, 'ask me anything' type content, gossip, political or current affairs commentary, the occasional compelling chart or graph or whatever - but accessing them requires effort.
On Reddit you're the person who has to go to a specific subreddit (or sets up a custom homepage with your favorites), looks for the content, sorts it, then manually clicks on each link, sees if the post is good. On Twitter, you slowly and laboriously build out your network of followers by weaving in and out of other people's tweets and replies, clicking on their profiles, dismissing them if they're boring, private or post nothing, or maybe scrolling through them and then following them if they seem interesting. In the end you have a custom feed of X followed, but any time you want to expand your circle of interests / followed list, you repeat some form of this process.
Threads, if it works, will distil all this text into the most compelling nuggets of content (presumably with some kind of monetization or influencer model at some point) and then deliver an infinite conveyor belt of them algorithmically tuned to your exact interests. What Reddit and Twitter require their users to do manually, Threads will automate. You like jokes from 'The Office' or short-form fanfiction of Disney movies or thoughtful criticism of video game mechanics or DC political gossip? (Millions of people do.) Threads - if it's able to build a user base big enough (it probably won't) - will deliver an endless supply of these to you directly, no searching or following or whatever necessary, just content. Just like TikTok.
Like TikTok, Threads rejects large aspects of the 'creator economy' that exists on YouTube, Twitch and Instagram (although the latter is moving away from it). ByteDance recognized that most users don't care where their content comes from, TikTok is happy to blow up one post from a small time creator to a hundred million views (if it's really funny or whatever), then never promote any of their other content ever again if the algorithm determines it's less compelling. The magic of TikTok is that while there are many successful creators, much of the content comes from relative randoms who languish in obscurity posting stuff with 5 views until they have one really funny sketch, or one really adorable video of their dog or whatever, then that gets shared unbelievably widely.
Most people aren't consistently compelling content creators, but millions of people probably tell one really funny joke a year, or have one genuinely insightful realization. On Reddit these moments usually get lost in the noise, on Twitter they're buried because they're made by an account with 12 followers that only posts a few times a month. On Threads, the algorithm can recognize that they're something special due to proportional like rates or sharing or whatever, and promote the fuck out of it. Then multiply that by millions of creators, and you can establish this successful force-feeding of content.
You could outline the history of social media kind of like this:
A first generation, in which people primarily followed real-life friends or acquaintances of those friends (and so on). Those real-life friends shared their thoughts, pictures, ideas, inane ramblings and so on. This was Facebook and its predecessors like MySpace and Friendster.
A second generation, in which companies realized that dedicated creators (comedians on twitter, models on instagram, vloggers on youtube) were more compelling than most people's friends, and made content that kept users on the platform longer than your inane high school friend's narration of their mundane life. This is the dawn of 'parasocial' media like modern YouTube, Instagram, Twitch and Twitter. Sometimes people still follow real-life friends on these platforms, but increasingly (especially off Instagram), dedicated creators make up the vast majority of the content they consume. Reddit, as a descendant of forums, gradually evolved into this on many/most mainstream or default subreddits.
A third generation, in which instead of the 'creator economy' being like a grocery store where users search for and pick out products, the software itself does it for you, learning your likes and dislikes and then delivering an endless stream of compelling, dopamine-hit content that you can scroll through at your leisure without ever having to search for anything, with zero friction. This is TikTok's genius, and it's why TikTok is the only major new success in social media in over a decade.
Threads probably won't succeed, but I think the idea of a TikTok For Text will at some point. The model is just too good for the idea itself not to work.
Since it's insistent on being an "app" and not something you can use with a web browser, it's essentially inaccessible to me.
Oh god, am I becoming a boomer?
All this talk on reddit about apps and app breaking api changes. And here I am using desktop mode on my phone. Why would I download an app when my phone already has a web browser?
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Twitter is already the tiktok of text. Before the musk takeover the only feed was the algorithmic one, containing mostly suggested tweets by people you didn't follow.
We got a choice to turn it off now, but twitter has been the toktok of text for a long time now.
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I think the "tiktokification of text" is a pretty major downside. Twitter has the capability of being used in a highbrow manner. Instagram was the same way, until they almost destroyed it, and now it's in an uneasy middle-state.
I think ultimately serious, normal adults are not interested in wading through a mixture of adolescent snark and not-subtle, vapid, hail-corporate-adjacent self promotion to actually exchange ideas. I feel like there is still a huge opportunity for substack notes to be "hey we are the serious place" but their app sucks.
Maybe gen z just takes the whole internet and destroys everything good about it. Not sure at this point.
Current adults, sure. But if younger generations grow up addicted to these platforms and we don’t regulate them at all, I doubt they will suddenly grow an immune system upon hitting 18 or 25 or whatever.
Yeah that's what my foreboding final line was supposed to hint towards. Personally I was exposed to a lot of silliness online and in culture and I feel like I grew up, if a little later than I should have. I have a hard time judging which way it will go with the next generation.
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Can we pause and note the absolute race to the bottom that America is gunning for with its culture here? The consequences of this technology will be ruinous for whole generations. “Let’s persuade people to use a platform where we entice them with the most addicting possible videos and text, the kind of stuff that glues them to their phone” is something Satan would cook up. It is the most abysmally bad idea humanly possible. It will show the low self esteemed the exact, razor sharp, minutely precise content to keep their self esteem low and their eyes glued to the phone. It will show whatever keeps fat people fat, and consequently glued to their phone. It is going to show you whatever leads to the most drama, which glues you to the phone. It is going to show you content that makes you despise your neighbor and community, because the algorithm knows such content reduces sum total phone gluey time. Anything that promotes you to engage in a hobby is going to be at the bottom of the algorithm, because such content takes you off your phone. The algorithm and its brainpower of 20,000 PhDs has one purpose: to keep you on your phone. Its purpose is to, literally, reduce your happiness and engagement with the world as much as humanly possible, so that you will stay on your phone. And, because it’s an intelligent algorithm, it does this with the artful subtlety of a sociopath with an expertise in Stockholm Syndrome.
I don't think anybody set out to intentionally make everyone unhappy so that they're glued to their phone. If not anybody, then most of them.
At worst, I can see them being agnostic on the matter, if they could have you hooked to Insta while also getting fitter they would. It would at least serve as a marketing point.
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The sad thing is I think many people truly believe they’re doing good work in social media companies. We have an amazing ability to rationalize evil.
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Nope, not doing it. Not now, not in foreseeable future.
"TikTok of text" sounds like "McDonalds of fine dining" - it's kind of a contradiction in terms. The whole point of TikTok is to supply you with mindless low-effort stimuli. Videos are great for that, pictures also ok, text? Less of that.
But if that's true, that is one more reinforcement to not touch Threads.
That's Ruth's Chris Steak House.
I hate the name. I know there’s a qUiRkY story behind it, but it’s still annoying, “Alex’s Michael Steak House”, “Victoria’s Roger Steak House”. It’s a travesty.
I read the story and still not getting it. OK, so she used to own a restaurant called "Chris Steak House". For some weird reason, after the original location burned down, she couldn't name the new location "Chris Steak House", but she didn't opt for "Ruth's Steak House" and for some reason, while "Chris Steak House" was verboten, "Ruth's Chris Steak House" was ok. That sounds like me not being able to open a restaurant under "McDonalds", but "J's McDonalds" being OK. I don't think that'd work.
Also, on their site, it says:
Is that actually true that most women couldn't apply for a bank card without their husband’s signature? Was that true for women that actually had their own (as opposed to joint with the husband, at which case obviously both owners would need to sign for credit) account, and how hard it was for a woman with independent means to get her own account? Also, if that was the case, how comes Ruth Fertel had "her home" and was able to "mortgage" it - if the banks were as sexist as the sentence above implies, how comes they made an exception for her? Wikipedia says:
So, she had "her banker" and "her lawyer" - while not being particularly rich, working as a lab technician. Again, if most women didn't have access to credit for sexist reasons, how come the bank gave a credit for a single woman with a low-paying job to develop what looks like an impossible business? Wouldn't that kind of deal be called "predatory loan" nowdays?
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I am bullish on Threads.
Some platform transfers are like a Siphon. The hard part is getting the first leak to start. After that, it sustains itself. A good siphon needs 2 things : the destination should be at a low-enough potential and the fence should be short enough. Twitter made the fence shorter by causing all their problems and creating a will for users to leave. Every other destination platform so far has itself being high friction : Mastadon, Blue sky, etc. Threads is so low effort to start it is not even funny.
Digg to Reddit was like this. Twitter will keep bleeding users now that the Siphon has begun. Twitter might still hold onto some communities, but it will be a shell of itself without the core 'normie audience', and as threads becomes feature complete. the quirky people will transition as well. Adding new features to threads is going to be a breeze for Facebook. A new platform is infinitely easier to build on without tech debt.
emphasis on trying. Facebook has shown itself to be sufficiently mobile given enough user demand. As of now, it appears as if it is a twitter-peer, not competitor. But, if more ex-twitter users start demanding twitter like features, I can see Threads morphing into a non-anonymous-twitter because that's what users want. The product follows the money.
My predictions:
95% - Threads will never be bigger than Twitter at its peak
90% - Threads will have a positive stock impact on Meta's future
80% - Threads is permanent and here to stay. A ~20% of twitter's US base will have moved permanently in before Oct 2023
70% - Threads will increasingly look more and more like twitter. It will not differentiate itself. It will compete on a 1:1 feature basis.
60% - Threads will have full feature parity with twitter in 1 year
50% - Snapchat has 30% of instagram's users. Threads will have more than 30% of Twitter's active users in 2 years.
20% - Threads will have more active users than twitter in 2 years
Upvote because while I disagree with the predictions myself, it's good epistemics to register them for falsification.
Someone asked Zorba to make a prediction market here, and while that's probably more effort than it's worth, it's still worth something!
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Unrelated observation, but I think Community Notes is one of the few good things that have been added to Twitter of late.
I find myself surprised at how they debunk lots of viral content I previously accepted uncritically, which I guess is sort of the point. For recent example, the thread about the richest billionaire in Africa being trolled by some random Brazilian, and a picture purporting to show that the Threads logo looked like Homer Simpson's ear.
I suspect that if a similar version was implemented on Threads, they'd be far more leery of "hate-facts", which would kill most of the utility.
Oh, I've read that African billionaire thing a lot through secondary sources but I'm not on Twitter, what was the nature of the debunking?
Basically all the tweets were fabricated, including the ones claiming to show conversations with Twitter support.
Oh and the Brazilian guy doesn't actually exist.
What are you guys talking about? I tried googling and could find nothing.
There's a viral meme about the "richest man in Africa" being trolled for years by a random and persistent Brazilian man who makes (really funny) memes mocking him on his social media pages. The latter isn't real.
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Interesting take. For the sake of playing devil's advocate, I wonder whether TikTok with Pictures and Video will always be better enough dopamine rush that TT4Text can't compete on that front.
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I'm going to register 90% certainty that it doesn't become the Twitter equivalent for "1 billion people" like Zuck wanted within the next 5 years.
About 80% that it doesn't dethrone Twitter or meaningfully result in an exodus of more than, say, 20% of its current active user base.
I would hope for obvious reasons most people see why I'm leery about projecting anything out beyond 10 years. (If you didn't know, it's AI)
Right, it won’t be long before unlimited entertainment content can be easily generated for us. Even so, it’ll probably still be delivered through many of the platforms people use today (because of install base, transition periods etc).
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I am, to be honest, a little sad that the Facebook of 10-15 years ago isn't really around anymore. To some extent, the friend network is still there and it's interesting to me to follow what my classmates and friends at the time are now up to. I think there's till a market for a good service like that for mainly keeping in touch and tracking major life events ("births, deaths, and marriages"), but modern Facebook seems to aggressively recommend Instagram-like creators rather than creating an environment where I can see "oh, this friend from college just moved to the same town as me" and stimulate real communities. But maybe I'm just getting old and reaching the "old man yells at
someone else's computercloud" stage.For me at least, this is just a change within the last few months. Up until then my Facebook feed was exclusively activity of my friends, groups I had joined, and pages I had liked (even if it was stuff like "Bob liked a post in Nature Pics") and ads. Now it's probably 60% meme posts from random pages that I've never interacted with.
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Sounds like a failure of Facebook's business model. They've cast the bait and hook and you didn't bite. That's a win in my eyes, but it's bad for business.
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The issue is that there isn't enough content to fill facebook with quality content. People are spending several hours a day scrolling on their phone. There aren't enough childhood friends getting married and second cousins graduating to fill such a massive feed. People are opening their phone 50 times a day. The world isn't eventful enough to provide content.
I think that's because social media follows a Brave New World business model. Everything is geared toward pumping out content to trigger that short-term dopamine rush. There's a great book I read awhile back that took an interesting look at the problem. I think in a way, maybe human beings have strayed too far from their evolutionary niche, and it's making people miserable. Whether it's sex to someone that's never seen porn, or being an urban explorer in your own city as a teenager, or reading about other cultures through books instead of YouTube videos; the world is much more enchanting and fun with the shadow of ignorance cast over our lives.
I sometimes think that a not-for-(huge)-profit social network could work. Something like how Craigslist still has a comparatively austere website but manages to stick around modestly. I'm not sure what I'd want it to be, really: Facebook (driven by a web of social connections) is a very different platform from Reddit (pseudonymous shitposting) in ways that in strongly want to keep both, as long as the streams never cross.
It does seem like the hyper-capitalist market-maximizing nature of social media drives a lot of the dark patterns like introducing unrelated scissor statements and Instagram models into a feed I'd otherwise want to be strictly topical because they're not wrong that it probably increases median visit time.
It makes me glad that places like this one exist (thanks, Zorba!). I wonder if we'll see a resurgence of old-school sites at some point like how retro-style video games (pixel art!) have become popular.
I'm also glad places like this exist. Twitter has never been my thing. Reddit is far too politically one-sided. Other platforms have a hard time generating engagement. And one problem common to all platforms that attempt to have an informative, interested and competitive userbase is that eventually they all end up catering to the lowest common denominator. You used to be able to have interesting discussions on Reddit, years and years ago; hard as that is to believe. It's also why I 'hate' YouTube "Shorts." Adblockers should equate that to spam, ideally. Because it's low information, low content, dopamine driven nonsense. Hacker News is probably the last/only other refuge I can think of where you get good/decent engagement and informative posts.
I went the route of Shoutwire -> Digg -> Reddit. That was the genesis of my early adult engagement with relevant topics of the day.
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I agree with most of your post, but isn't the default "For You" tab on Twitter already the "TikTok of text"? It is also happy to show you viral posts from people you aren't following, and also to not show you boring posts from people you do subscribe to. Famously, accounts with millions of followers that people feel like they should follow, but whose posts don't get much activity, often have many fewer views per post than a hit from an unknown.
So it seems like Twitter (and to a lesser extent, facebook) is already adopting the TikTok strategy.
To me the ‘For You’ tab feels like a kind of last-generation content recommendation engine. It’s feels conceptually more similar to the Instagram discovery feed than Threads’ homepage, although I recognize that might be a purely vibes-based supposition.
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