Any long-run view of Threads could not be informed by its rocketship onboard debut. I've described my experience there as nebulous. When you slow-build a community, you grasp who your followers are and your sense of place on a platform. Fast growth hinders a sense of what it "is" to you. - ThreadSky

jeremylittau.com • 526 days ago

Any long-run view of Threads could not be informed by its rocketship onboard debut. I've described my experience there as nebulous. When you slow-build a community, you grasp who your followers are and your sense of place on a platform. Fast growth hinders a sense of what it "is" to you.

Reposted from Jay Rosen

Major brands have stopped posting to Threads. The BBC is one of them. news.yahoo.com/major-brands... via
@shoq.bsky.social

Comments

richfiend.bsky.social•526 days ago

Google+ vibes

willelton.bsky.social•526 days ago

Also, does Threads let you turn anyone’s php into the caret symbol if you scroll carefully enough? Sir, I argue that it does not.

uajamie.bsky.social•526 days ago

I get the feeling they thought that if everyone en-masse moved from twitter to threads, then the culture that had matured on Twitter would move with the people. Thus, they wouldn’t need to re-build it themselves. But, this showed there are no shortcuts.

darthbluesky.bsky.social•526 days ago

this is v interesting jeremy!

jeremylittau.com•526 days ago

thank you darth

whetmoser.com•526 days ago

that’s how facebook grew! the whole elite-college velvet rope was a clever strategy

entheticus.bsky.social•526 days ago

Threads felt like a classic ‘90s shopping mall with big backlit signs shouting the name of major American #brands from every corner…and possibly you’d bump into someone you knew from school

jeremylittau.com•526 days ago

But a glaring lack of a food court. 😅

coffeeaddict.bsky.social•526 days ago

My brother was involved in threads told me their vision post launch — as a Twitter refugee I was like “good luck with that”

Feel vindicated

paulmguest.bsky.social•526 days ago

I like Threads. I like Bluesky. I miss old Twitter, especially as a source for breaking news. Maybe there will never again be a default app/platform, and the future is niche. I don't know.

bmoritz99.bsky.social•526 days ago

Hoo boy, was I wrong about Threads.

It really feels like they saw Twitter falling apart, and rushed it out to try to stick it to Elon. Which, respect. But man, it is the Google+ of the 2020s.

medialawprof.bsky.social•526 days ago

As usual, I hung back and waited for you nerds to get on Threads and see if it was worth it. I won't put a Meta app on my phone, especially not with the mandatory tracking in Threads; since that the app was the only option, I waited until it wasn't. Now I don't have to bother. Problem solved.

jeremylittau.com•526 days ago

I think it's a good lesson that the era of judging a platform's viability by its userbase size alone is over, particularly if it's competing against established platforms that do a similar thing.

medialawprof.bsky.social•526 days ago

Maybe users are getting savvier, too, about the cost and benefits of a new platform (what it demands, what you get, what you give up), where the startup cost for participation is higher. I think Mastodon is like that - the benefits for many don't outweigh the fears/difficulties so they go Bartleby.

bmoritz99.bsky.social•526 days ago

Also too, not having a following tab or any meaningful search for like three weeks probably doomed Threads. You logged in, maybe you were like me and thought this was cool. But then you came back and it was not useful, and so you stopped going.

jeremylittau.com•526 days ago

Lack of a way to track new follow (remember what a mess it was in notifications?) did it to me. To my original point, for Twitter refugees it made it very hard to know who was following me. Sense of audience matters so much on social platforms if you’re going to post. If you’re lurking, less so.

bmoritz99.bsky.social•526 days ago

All good points. One thing I've been thinking of - Twitter's user base was always much, much smaller than its influence would have you believe. And so I wonder if a lot of the people "On Threads" really don't have any interest in that type of microblogging.

jeremylittau.com•526 days ago

I think I've decided to newsletter this one. My "model home community" metaphor seems to be understood as useful. Just lots of walls with pretty outsides, inviting you to squint and imagine.

bmoritz99.bsky.social•526 days ago

There's really big "nobody goes there, it's too crowded" energy on Threads.

bmoritz99.bsky.social•526 days ago

And as I saw you comment, the Arrested Development pun potential is off the charts.

barleyscotch.bsky.social•526 days ago

This is also the case with a music library: building it piece by piece over time builds a relationship with each album, but firing up Spotify and immediately having access to nearly everything ever recorded makes it all anonymous and meaningless.

jeremylittau.com•526 days ago

This is a really nice analogy!

barleyscotch.bsky.social•525 days ago

Thanks. I wish it wasn't so close to me. I'm a musician and thus always trying to figure out how people mostly find and consume music, and how to best deliver it to them. I fear we are back in the 50's now, single songs, little emotional investment in most artists. It is what it is!

jeremylittau.com•526 days ago

One of Twitter's genuine struggles was onboarding newbies as the platform was established. Your sense of place/community differed from others as a function of your network. Their solution was "add these 200 people" at signup and it largely didn't work well in terms of retaining people.

jeremylittau.com•526 days ago

When I've taught this as concept and practice, I've argued for a slow-growth method. It takes years to establish a quality network and your own voice, and those have to grow together. Fast onboarding not only short-circuits that, it teaches you that building with purpose doesn't matter.

femzforever.bsky.social•526 days ago

The incessant “no dem under 10,000 followers” posts were meaningless. Now, the pace of following has slowed thankfully. I agree that network building needs to be slow/sure.

I would not yet stick a fork in threads because they still need to add important features and Zuck’s pockets are deep.

jeremylittau.com•526 days ago

It takes time. It's why Twitter's demise is so upsetting to me. It's not the platform dying that's hard, it's that I was so invested in those relationships and had carefully cultivated who I was in that space. Starting over(ish) here. Slow growth again, but I can see why people stayed with Twitter.

christinabinkley.bsky.social•526 days ago

Yes EXACTLY. I’m still looking to replace the experience I had until a year ago on Twitter - a combo of Twitter friends and an ability to get an immediate read on big events as they were unfolding.

jeremylittau.com•526 days ago

I'm not sure Facebook intended its hockey stick growth on steroids per se, but definitely had the whole recipe to harness network effects for that purpose. But fast growth + big instant network has drawbacks.

People were exposed to a model home community, not a real one. What could be vs. what is.

tannerpowell.bsky.social•526 days ago

The smartest thing I did on threads (almost by accident) was to NOT automatically follow my IG social graph. Instead, I sought out as many familiar faces from Twitter as possible—professional *writers* and dark-humored introverts—vs the aesthetes I’d collected on IG. They are different animals.

jeremylittau.com•526 days ago

I did the same (though a lot of my networks were similar because I'm an atypical IG user). I still had some trouble even so, because in part I knew it had parts of my Twitter audience but not all of it (and it was hard to grasp *what* part it had).

onedishwasher.bsky.social•526 days ago

"Model home community" is a really good phrase

jeremylittau.com•526 days ago

Was completely thinking of Arrested Development. 😂

theclint.bsky.social•526 days ago

I'll be the voice of dissent over here. I like Threads. It's not a mature platform but I've found a good selection of people to follow. The biggest thing holding all of the X alternatives back is the lack of access for third party scheduling apps. To me, that explains why brands haven't bought in.

jeremylittau.com•526 days ago

I think you're probably a typical Twitter lurker refugee, and can see how Threads might be useful. Key is journalists staying engaged. OP that inspired that thread is noticing orgs cutting bait. I'm noticing a journalism influx here. Remains to be seen if that trend lasts of course.

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