Meta’s privacy policy says the app may collect and share information about purchases, location, contacts, “financial info,” health and fitness, and browsing and search history, and then share that data to advertisers.
In addition, the Threads and Instagram apps, according to Apple’s App Store, “may include handling” of “sensitive information,” which could include race, sexual orientation and religion.
That could be the reason for the delay in EU rollout. That type of information is classified under the GDPR as “special category data” and there are rigorous rules for how the information is collected, stored, accessed, and processed, rules which Meta has shown itself chronically unable to honor.
I’m the opposite, app-wise. I have the Messenger app on my phone, but not the FB app. Messenger doesn’t show ads in the app, but Facebook does, so I only look at FB with an ad-blocking browser.
God, I’m so edgy.
yeah, what was Zuckerberg thinking when he came up with that name?
How will you tell people to read your threads on threads?
And what will people call the posts? For twitter, they invented a new term “to tweet”. (as in “the senator tweeted today that…”)
What will be the new term be?
(“the senator threaded today that…”)
It sounds like your grandmother sewing your socks
Sorry, It don’t work, mate.*
–
yes, it’s a Monty Python reference.
“It don’t work, mate” : https://youtu.be/4vuW6tQ0218?t=276
Posts? “The OP posted…” Just like we do here! No special term needed. YMMV.
I have not tried Threads yet; I likely will eventually. But reading the early reports, this feels strongly to me like a product that was needlessly rushed to market early, before finishing the product testing.
None of Twitter’s rivals have really gained much traction yet; if Meta had waited another month or two to fix some of the irritations that have already been reported, I think they would have been better off.
I think you mean threadsshit.
I wonder how many of the irritations and “fixes” are really just them hoping to persuade the public to swallow this gigantic piece of spyware hook, line, and sinker, but them also being willing to pull back here and there where the squealing is loudest.
IOW they didn’t release it before it was “ready”. They released it in the form they hoped the public would accept, and are now tweaking here and there to buy even more complete acceptance.
I think Threads has a decent shot at dethroning Twitter. The first two weeks aren’t the make-or-break period. It’s what happens with the Twitter content creators who did, or still do, have large followings. If the major news outlets, government agencies, and commentators with their own brand recognition start moving to Threads, it’ll crush Twitter.
That movement doesn’t have to be a stampede in the first week. If it’s evidently happening at least some over the next couple of months I think we can say that Twitter’s dam has been fatally undermined and increasing momentum towards Threads will kill it the rest of the way rather quickly thereafter. Can you say “Myspace”?
If I was a Threads competitor with a product out there, or a product about to be released, I now know I have a couple months, tops, to make my big grab at the brass ring before I’m washed away. Somebody could still pull that off, but their window of opportunity is closing quickly.
It definitely was rushed, but I wouldn’t say needlessly. There was an opportunity to jump on active frustration with Twitter, and Meta is better served getting something out quick than waiting for a better product. Speed trumps quality in situations like this.
@LSLGuy has it right, they don’t need everyone to love it out of the gate. They just need a slow migration until the dam breaks.
I’m not using the app, so I’m not speaking from any personal experience here.
But there’s a difference between “it’s buggy”, “It’s lacking obvious features end users would like”, and “it’s full of consumer unfriendly features”.
The first is a sign of rushed release. The last is a reminder, as if we should need it again, that the end users are not the customers to make happy; they’re the product to be sold to others.
The middle could be either. Once you decide whether the missing feature the end user wants helps the end user to Zuck’s detriment or helps Zuck sell the end user to the advertisers you’ll know which column to put it in: rush or you’re-the-product.
So far I like it well enough, except I’m hoping they add the functionality to only see posts from users you follow (that is supposedly in the cards, but who knows.) A hell of a lot more intuitive than Mastodon, which I tried back in December and promptly gave up on. I use Instagram pretty regularly for my business these days, so the similar layout is fine with me.
the problem that I see is that “there is nothing on threads that isn’t on Twitter, also” … but the inverse is not true … IOW they lack “exclusive content” that would make me switch …
anybody remember a big push some 6-12 months ago when Whatsapp changed their EULA in europe for Signal ??? for var. weeks Signal was the leader in DL from the shop … I also DL it and from my 100 W’app contacts some 8 were also on Signal …so it went dormant again (b/c I cannot be arsed to use 2 identical softwares ), for the same reason I mention above … so after a few weeks I was back to w’app and installed signal altogether.
In this specific segment you are either Nr. one or you don’t exist … (exc. if they manage to maintain momentum on Threads for weeks/months and keep it in the news …)
but people wont interact on Twitter, Threads, Mastodon, Telegram, etc… especially if they lesser ones are full of clients who just replicate their twitter accounts to “cover all bases” …
I’m on it, and I think early on, I clicked on and liked a few threads from George Takei and Randy Rainbow and a couple of Pride posts. Now my thread feed is populated with beefcake thirst traps.
I agree the app name might end up being a problem, but “threads” is a pretty good term to try to own, I think. One of the issues with Twitter for newbies is that once you get past the initial “tweet” the nomenclature and usage gets fairly opaque. “Subtweet”, “DM”, “retweet”, “hashtag”, “quote tweet”, and of course “threads” are all pretty confusing for most casuals.
I think there’s a lot of clarity and potential value in the idea of “starting a Thread”. We obviously are familiar with the idea on the Dope and every message board uses the term. Discussion threads are ubiquitous across most websites and apps that allow user engagement. If Meta can find a way to turn the idea of a Thread into their own thing, they’ll have really accomplished something big. It’ll be tough, but if adoption soars and it goes mainstream, they have a shot.
It would somewhat reframe the use case a bit. Tweeting is basically blasting your word vomit out into the ether. The digital equivalent of shouting out your window. Whether that creates a meaningful discussion is not really the point, and for many people that’s the inherent problem. Starting a thread on the other hand invites participation. You’re proposing a topic for discussion, not just crapping out a shower thought or promoting something. A thread is a more Reddit-like idea than a tweet. The challenge will be its ubiquity, but that’s where the opportunity is.
All that said, “Tweet” entering the vernacular is a really valuable thing for Twitter. You don’t need to say “Person X posted XYZ on Twitter”, you simply say “They tweeted”. In the short term you will need to say that “Person Y started a thread on Threads” which is comparatively clunky. But, if they can turn that into “Person Y started a Thread” and making it universal, they will have effectively neutralized Twitter. We shall see.
Yes. Zactly.
At one time folks said “I posted something on my wall on Facebook.” Now they say “I posted something on my wall” and we all know they meant Facebook, not the trespass barrier around their home or someplace inside their den.
“I started a thread about X” and “I’m involved in a thread about X” or “I follow threads by celebrity X” will all probably become specific generics referng to Zuck’s Threads app.
A process sort of the opposite of how “xerox” became a generic for “photocopy”
I’ve been on it less than a week now, and I’m becoming increasingly frustrated/bored by it. I’m forced to see the same 10-20 posts every time i open the app. And they’re all from a few hours ago or a day ago. Nothing new. I refresh the screen over and over and nothing updates. Scrolling down, it’s the same 20 threads I’ve been looking at for days. And most of these aren’t posted by anyone i follow. Ffs, most of the pages i follow on Instagram are now followed by me on Threads, and when i go to their page, they’re posting things, just nothing shows up in my feed. On the rare occasion i see a new thread, as soon as i start to read it, it vanishes only to be replaced by one of the same old threads.
Hope it becomes a little more dynamic and actually lets me see things from people i follow at some point.
Threads’ daily active user count is down 82% from launch as of July 31, according to Sensor Tower, with just eight million users accessing the app each day. That is the lowest it has been since the day after the app’s release when daily active users peaked at roughly 44 million, Sensor Tower said.
People are also opening the app less frequently and spending less time there, Sensor Tower added.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/03/tech/threads-user-count-falls/
Looks like a bust.
Four months on, Threads has arguably become a significant competitor for X, and has done so a lot faster than many people expected: the app hit thirty million sign-ups within twenty-four hours of its launch; in a conference call on October 25, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s cofounder and CEO, said that it now has almost a hundred million monthly users, making it one of the fastest-growing apps in history, even beyond the initial sugar rush. And there are signs of growing usefulness for journalists, too—though that’s a more complicated story.
A year after Elon Musk formalized his takeover of X, that platform’s user metrics are down across the board. Musk said earlier this year that X has somewhere in the neighborhood of five hundred and thirty million monthly users; if both companies’ figures are accurate, then Threads has managed to sign up almost a fifth as many monthly users as a competitor that has been around since 2007.
Good to hear! X is full of trolls and haters, for the most part. There is a lot less of that on Threads.