As someone who tried all the Twitter alternatives, Threads was my least favorite. Not just because of the whole Meta thing which admittedly is yuck. But their timeline had no options on how to...
As someone who tried all the Twitter alternatives, Threads was my least favorite. Not just because of the whole Meta thing which admittedly is yuck. But their timeline had no options on how to sort, meaning it was completely flooded with posts by cringey clout chasing "influencers" posting the most interaction-baiting garbage I've ever seen.
News flash, I want to see stuff from people I've followed, not hundreds of onlyfans spammers and business "gurus"
While that may be your desire, the average user of either app greatly prefers the algorithmic timeline, especially for a boostrapping service, which is why they went with it first. But that being...
While that may be your desire, the average user of either app greatly prefers the algorithmic timeline, especially for a boostrapping service, which is why they went with it first.
But that being said, Threads has had a chronological timeline for months now.
Define "prefers." If you mean "increases continual user engagement" I'll bet your right. But from a user-story perspective, being able to catch up on the day's updates in 5 minutes or less then...
Define "prefers." If you mean "increases continual user engagement" I'll bet your right.
But from a user-story perspective, being able to catch up on the day's updates in 5 minutes or less then signing out is a win.
If the algorithm was made an option rather than the default, and most people tried to switch to it, then maybe I'd believe its actually preferred for the user.
Agreed. From an anecdotal, personal standpoint, most of the issues I saw folks have with Twitter almost always seemed to stem from their usage of the "For You" timeline. Many of them didn't appear...
Agreed. From an anecdotal, personal standpoint, most of the issues I saw folks have with Twitter almost always seemed to stem from their usage of the "For You" timeline. Many of them didn't appear to even realize "Following" was an option, at that.
If nothing else, I know I loathe any sort of algorithmic feed, and turn it off as soon as I realize I'm on it. I don't know if I'd even be able to use a site that didn't let me turn it off.
You can't set the chronological timeline as your default, you have to switch to it every time you open the app. I'm getting fed up with platforms making it more and more difficult to curate my feed.
You can't set the chronological timeline as your default, you have to switch to it every time you open the app. I'm getting fed up with platforms making it more and more difficult to curate my feed.
The man behind Facebook has somehow managed to make the Twitter experience worse. Following people, a key part of the social media mogul's earlier ventures, is meaningless on Threads. You are beholden to its algorithm and who it reckons you will interact with. (Want to see what your mates are posting about? Tough, here's an 'Epic Meme from the official Salesforce account.') Your timeline isn't chronological either.
[...]
Threads' naffness won't stop its success. It's data-scraping fluffily dressed up as substandard corporate twaddle. It's a cringe-inducing privacy invasion. It's not meant for users, but that doesn't really matter: you're not a user, you're a product.
The default Threads experience might be like that, but it's a platform that benefits greatly from heavy-handed gardening. The first couple weeks I was on it, I was slapping that mute button like I...
The default Threads experience might be like that, but it's a platform that benefits greatly from heavy-handed gardening. The first couple weeks I was on it, I was slapping that mute button like I was playing hungry hungry hippoes, and now I don't see any of that stuff.
My challenge is I'm not sure what it's supposed to be used for. I do not want to use it for news or politics, since I don't believe the format is helpful for those topics. So basically right now half the conversations I'm seeing are meta-conversations about twitter or threads, which is equally useless to me. I don't consider a platform dedicated to platformchat a good use of my time.
I get that you're responding directly to the GP's comment, but the confusion stems from the title that says "pour 'gasoline' on Threads growth..." The idiom pour gasoline on the fire has a...
I get that you're responding directly to the GP's comment, but the confusion stems from the title that says "pour 'gasoline' on Threads growth..."
The idiom pour gasoline on the fire has a negative connotation. It means to make things worse. Add fuel to the fire addresses the same situation and "fan the flames" is listed as a synonym for both terms.
The title also specifically mentions "Threads growth," which isn't what one might immediately expect to be the subject of the idiom, so it sounds extra confusing to me, and perhaps others. You don't pour fuel on growth, you add it to the thing that creates growth, such as content or content creators or whatever. You fuel content. If your competitor has a PR blunder, you pour fuel on that.
I get that the title is quoting someone who probably used the phrase wrong, but I think the title is confusing two idioms, or just two opportunities to use the idiom correctly. That said, Ii think that everyone who read it twice understood the title because if you take the idiom out entirely you get "Mark Zuckerberg delivers on promise as the [Threads] platform regains users while X shrinks," which gets the point across and with the same level of detail (which is pretty minimal).
Getting back on topic, I think Zuckerberg has a comparatively easy time with growing Threads not only because of the existing buy-in of users within the Meta family of social media apps, but also because so much news about Twitter is so negative that Threads simply can exist as an alternative that has the occasional press release announcing some "new feature." Without numerous missteps I don't see how Threads doesn't carve out its own place in the market.
I really wish every positive article about the growth of a free online service would end with a section like "Of course, this is almost certainly a ploy to lure users in before trapping them and...
I really wish every positive article about the growth of a free online service would end with a section like "Of course, this is almost certainly a ploy to lure users in before trapping them and tightening the screws to milk them dry." The fact that the media have been completely naive about this likelihood for the past decade is bad enough, but it's completely inexcusable when we've seen it happen, repeatedly, in just the last year or so.
Recently bought into X Premium to try it out and have found it a substantially different experience to how Twitter used to be for me in the past. I went from getting at most about 5 - 20...
Recently bought into X Premium to try it out and have found it a substantially different experience to how Twitter used to be for me in the past.
I went from getting at most about 5 - 20 impressions on my posts, to analytics that have gone up by six figure percentages. When Elon Musk said that verified accounts would be given far greater priority in their algorithm, he really meant it. It feels surreal to use X and not feel like I've been shadowbanned.
Threads on the other hand... haven't really used it much since signing up. It lacks necessary functionality that even Mastodon has. How Zuckerberg thinks he's going to compete with Musk when he can't even add basic features like hashtags and trending topics to Threads...
As someone who tried all the Twitter alternatives, Threads was my least favorite. Not just because of the whole Meta thing which admittedly is yuck. But their timeline had no options on how to sort, meaning it was completely flooded with posts by cringey clout chasing "influencers" posting the most interaction-baiting garbage I've ever seen.
News flash, I want to see stuff from people I've followed, not hundreds of onlyfans spammers and business "gurus"
While that may be your desire, the average user of either app greatly prefers the algorithmic timeline, especially for a boostrapping service, which is why they went with it first.
But that being said, Threads has had a chronological timeline for months now.
Define "prefers." If you mean "increases continual user engagement" I'll bet your right.
But from a user-story perspective, being able to catch up on the day's updates in 5 minutes or less then signing out is a win.
If the algorithm was made an option rather than the default, and most people tried to switch to it, then maybe I'd believe its actually preferred for the user.
Agreed. From an anecdotal, personal standpoint, most of the issues I saw folks have with Twitter almost always seemed to stem from their usage of the "For You" timeline. Many of them didn't appear to even realize "Following" was an option, at that.
If nothing else, I know I loathe any sort of algorithmic feed, and turn it off as soon as I realize I'm on it. I don't know if I'd even be able to use a site that didn't let me turn it off.
I'll stick with Bluesky if I'm ever hankering for Twitter, which I'm usually not.
You can't set the chronological timeline as your default, you have to switch to it every time you open the app. I'm getting fed up with platforms making it more and more difficult to curate my feed.
This was my analysis at the time:
The default Threads experience might be like that, but it's a platform that benefits greatly from heavy-handed gardening. The first couple weeks I was on it, I was slapping that mute button like I was playing hungry hungry hippoes, and now I don't see any of that stuff.
My challenge is I'm not sure what it's supposed to be used for. I do not want to use it for news or politics, since I don't believe the format is helpful for those topics. So basically right now half the conversations I'm seeing are meta-conversations about twitter or threads, which is equally useless to me. I don't consider a platform dedicated to platformchat a good use of my time.
He's... setting it on fire?
I get that you're responding directly to the GP's comment, but the confusion stems from the title that says "pour 'gasoline' on Threads growth..."
The idiom pour gasoline on the fire has a negative connotation. It means to make things worse. Add fuel to the fire addresses the same situation and "fan the flames" is listed as a synonym for both terms.
The title also specifically mentions "Threads growth," which isn't what one might immediately expect to be the subject of the idiom, so it sounds extra confusing to me, and perhaps others. You don't pour fuel on growth, you add it to the thing that creates growth, such as content or content creators or whatever. You fuel content. If your competitor has a PR blunder, you pour fuel on that.
I get that the title is quoting someone who probably used the phrase wrong, but I think the title is confusing two idioms, or just two opportunities to use the idiom correctly. That said, Ii think that everyone who read it twice understood the title because if you take the idiom out entirely you get "Mark Zuckerberg delivers on promise as the [Threads] platform regains users while X shrinks," which gets the point across and with the same level of detail (which is pretty minimal).
Getting back on topic, I think Zuckerberg has a comparatively easy time with growing Threads not only because of the existing buy-in of users within the Meta family of social media apps, but also because so much news about Twitter is so negative that Threads simply can exist as an alternative that has the occasional press release announcing some "new feature." Without numerous missteps I don't see how Threads doesn't carve out its own place in the market.
I really wish every positive article about the growth of a free online service would end with a section like "Of course, this is almost certainly a ploy to lure users in before trapping them and tightening the screws to milk them dry." The fact that the media have been completely naive about this likelihood for the past decade is bad enough, but it's completely inexcusable when we've seen it happen, repeatedly, in just the last year or so.
Recently bought into X Premium to try it out and have found it a substantially different experience to how Twitter used to be for me in the past.
I went from getting at most about 5 - 20 impressions on my posts, to analytics that have gone up by six figure percentages. When Elon Musk said that verified accounts would be given far greater priority in their algorithm, he really meant it. It feels surreal to use X and not feel like I've been shadowbanned.
Threads on the other hand... haven't really used it much since signing up. It lacks necessary functionality that even Mastodon has. How Zuckerberg thinks he's going to compete with Musk when he can't even add basic features like hashtags and trending topics to Threads...