Say what you will about Meta and their products, but I have mad respect for their production engineering team. Keeping things like Facebook and Instagram running is no easy task. You can't just cache your way out of it like most apps. People expect to see their friends' updates instantly.<p>I've been super impressed with the technology part of the Threads launch. I can't wait to read more about it in the future.
> <i>Five days [after July 5], over 100 million people had joined Threads, making it the most successful app launch of all time.</i><p>Err, no. The 100m were mostly migrated from existing Instagram users (which has ~500m DAU/2.35b MAU), not new joiners. Gizmodo [0]: <i>"[one month after launch] Threads Has Lost More Than 80% of Its Daily Active Users... DAU down from a peak of 44m to 8m, and falling at about 1% every day. Engagement was down to just 2.9 minutes a day compared to 19 minutes earlier in July."</i><p>If 100m existing users who briefly came over from Instagram and then mostly became inactive is "the most successful app launch of all time", then by that metric was Google+ forcibly converting new YouTube or Gmail users/commenters the most successful website-based [social] launch of all time? [1] <i>"1/2015: There are about 2.2 billion Google+ profiles. Of these, about 9% have any publicly posted content. Of those, about 37% have comments on YouTube videos as their most recent activity, and another 8% have profile-photo changes."</i><p>Can anyone cite third-party DAU and MAU stats on Threads, currently?<p>Or how many Threads users quit Twitter, and have remained active on Threads?<p>[0]: <a href="https://gizmodo.com/threads-has-lost-more-than-80-of-daily-active-users-1850707329" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://gizmodo.com/threads-has-lost-more-than-80-of-daily-a...</a><p>[1]: "Nobody is using Google+" BusinessInsider 1/20/2015 <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-active-users-2015-1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.businessinsider.com/google-active-users-2015-1</a>
Threads was a breath of fresh air at first and I followed a bunch of people I already followed on Instagram and Twitter. Opening the app today there is exactly 1 post from someone I follow and pages upon pages of ‘recommended’ content from people I don’t care about, much of which is outrage bait and political content. Talking to other people I know this experience seems to be common.<p>I understand the idea of wanting to make the app feel alive on day one by including content from popular influencers, but I genuinely think they would have had better retention if they went the other way and only showed you what you wanted to see - or at least separated the recommended posts onto another tab and gave better controls for filtering it.
Still not available in EU, as they will not allow to use email instead of instagram accounts [1]
1. <a href="https://www.theverge.com/23789754/threads-meta-twitter-eu-dma-digital-markets" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.theverge.com/23789754/threads-meta-twitter-eu-dm...</a>
If you're looking for a deep dive into the Threads apps, can check out this non-Meta written post: <a href="https://www.emergetools.com/deep-dives/threads">https://www.emergetools.com/deep-dives/threads</a>
> Instagram uses Python (Django) for its backend. By using the same backend for Threads, we could leverage a lot of the existing tech stack for Threads and reuse most of our existing data models, business logic, security features, and server infrastructure. This also meant users could sign in to the app with their existing Instagram account, making it super simple to onboard and set up your Threads app.<p>Looks like Python and Django is extremely scalable at Facebook scale, even after using Threads I didn't realise any downtime at all.<p>It would be possible for Mastodon to learn from this so that they too can scale to 200 million users.
They are kind of saying that they have become such a behemoth, with so much bureaucracy and inefficiency, that the only way they could move so fast is by building a sub team.
Kudos for being honest.
> With everything moving ahead at full speed toward a July launch, our team saw and took an opportunity to release the app early. On the upside, this meant Meta would be able to offer a new social app at a time when people were eager for a new experience.<p>Wow, this seems like an unnecessary dig at X.
Does anyone have DAU/MAU or "post" numbers for Twitter, Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon? Even if only estimates?<p>Who's growing fastest? Who's stagnating?
I've been enjoying Threads. What with Musk going all in blaming the ADL for his problems... that's just too much. The guy is unhinged. I used to think of him as quirky or eccentric and appreciate some of the good things he's been involved with, but he's gone off the rails.<p>Threads is still missing some features, and there's less traffic, but it's probably healthier for me to spend less time on social media anyway.
Noticed Threads during the second launch; it was earlier released during 2019. I forgot there's an app called Threads. I bet if an average person like me launched it, no one might have even noticed it. Such is life.