Threads Surpasses 30M Signups

When the app basically amounts to a new tab for an existing dominant social network, I don’t think this is too interesting. It’s almost like reporting “30M people opened the Facebook Marketplace tab” or something. I signed in, took one look at a Mr Beast tweet on my homepage, wondered “why would I want to look at this?” and then closed the app. But I count as a signup!

How many of these posts do we need? Is HN to become an hourly counter?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36612615">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36612615</a> Threads has 10M sign ups in seven hours<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36610716">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36610716</a> Threads hits 5M signups in the first four hours<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36609632">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36609632</a> Threads has passed 2M sign ups in the first 2 hours

Any non-invite launch will peak heavily to start, and drop very quickly after. One thing I&#x27;d be very curious about is what their WAU will be a month from now. This is the death knell for any social network - can you get ongoing engagement instead of just &quot;Testing this new platform for the first time, here&#x27;s a dog pic&quot; type posts?<p>One thing that worries me for their longevity is that they don&#x27;t actually offer any tangible user benefit. Right now their biggest sales pitch is that they&#x27;re &quot;not twitter&quot;. Many of those users who were looking for a solid replacements have moved to mastodon already, so it&#x27;ll be interesting to see if they have long term stickiness.<p>Still that doesn&#x27;t discount that this is a massive amount of users on day 1. Big props to the team!

Usually I&#x27;m pretty judgmental about moves like this, but despite the limited feature set, I think the execution here is impressive. Solid UI, easy to follow accounts, and basic UX interactions just work.<p>The only &quot;gotcha&quot; (and it&#x27;s a massive one) that I&#x27;ve seen are the privacy implications. If they take a step back on that, this could be a legitimate threat to Twitter in a few months time—especially if they establish a healthy release pace.

I think the promise of threads is exactly what many people want. Hopefully the product improves to meet the expectations. Some things I&#x27;d like to see:<p>1. Native notes like feature for long form posts I can embed and share. I cannot stand the tweets threads of (n&#x2F;27) about a topic.<p>2. Topic based feeds. Whether it&#x27;s hashtags or some other type of categorization process. I think I read on HN the other day a twitter engineer had come up with something like that but it never got buy in from the decision makers. This would also help filter out things I don&#x27;t want to see more broadly than manually muting users.<p>3. Enabling the option to only see verified accounts.<p>4. Private threads. Threads where you can tag an audience where only they can see the posts and replies. This would be a form of DM that isn&#x27;t just another chat app.

They mention the fediverse in their onboarding flow, so it seems like they’re somewhat serious about interoperability.<p>I’m really hoping that this will be the push needed to make ActivityPub social networking go mainstream.

My biggest issue with Threads is that search only searches profiles.<p>What was Twitter’s “magic” to me was that search was for tweets.<p>So you could hear about a live event happening and in near-time find information about it and people who were there or knowledgeable about the event.<p>My first exposure to this was the Atlanta Gas Shortages in 2008 and it was when the hashtag really came into its prime as a way to quickly find relevant content.<p>Threads has none of that. Try searching for the “Tour De France”. This morning when I did that I only got two profiles. This kills discoverability and the ability to follow the zeitgeist.<p>If Threads changes search to index content then it could work. But until then it’s just bland with its attempt at using an algorithm to spoon feed you content without your ability to control what you want to see.<p>Shameless link to the thread where I first put these thoughts down: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.threads.net&#x2F;t&#x2F;CuW77iEuquK&#x2F;?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.threads.net&#x2F;t&#x2F;CuW77iEuquK&#x2F;?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA...</a>

non-geoblocked content, for people in EU: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;TAIyP" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;TAIyP</a>

I don’t understand why anyone is going to Threads at all. I mean, post Drop Facebook and all, why would you go back into the Zucks social arms?

I&#x27;m not a social media guy, I&#x27;m not going to use threads probably ever, and I understand that Threads is basically just an appendage out of Insta...<p>But I still say hats off to the devs for making a product that scaled so well so quickly. How many day 1 launches fail due to servers buckling under the load? Props to you guys for a technical job well done.

Never heard of Threads until seeing this post. Not sure if the home page is broken, or if it is just utterly unhelpful in learning more about this app. It seems like the goal is to get you to install the app to find out. I&#x27;m giving it a shot, so I guess it worked.

[dupe]<p>We can stop posting these now? There&#x27;s plenty of discussion in the other two or three threads (pun intended)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36609632">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36609632</a>

Are there any good lists of scientific, academic, hacker-news type people to follow? Was hoping to see Yann LeCun at least, but so far it’s just Mr. Beast, etc.

Why is this flagged? It’s worth having the discussion

Oh good. Yet another one of these posts.

I signed up out of curiosity, but just like my instagram&#x2F;tiktok&#x2F;Mastadon&#x2F;whetever accounts, they are just... there.<p>People like me count as a signup, but active users after the hype dies down will matter more.<p>I stick to youtube even for shorts, because its content&#x2F;recommendations are much better than tiktok&#x2F;instagram reels (I <i>could</i> spend time time curating it, but why other when Youtube has already done it for me?)<p>Same for twitter, already curated with multiple lists setup for me to browse depending on topic, I am not going to do the same on threads&#x2F;bluesky&#x2F;mastadon, ain&#x27;t nobody got time for that.<p>Something drastic will have to happen for me to switch, but it&#x27;s unlikely.<p>Then again I am in the wrong demographic. I guess its the age group thing, I am in my mid-30&#x27;s, a Gen-whatever we are called.<p>New kids probably who are hyped on instagram and tiktok are probably already telling us OK boomer and making leet memes on threads, and we will just look on in confusion.<p>I will believe Threads is real when people start to ratio each other on it.<p>____<p>Prophecy: usage will split and depending on the social&#x2F;cultural&#x2F;commercial sphere, people will start posting on the relevant platform. If you regularly post on instagram, you will append threads into your workflow.<p>News twitter will NOT be following to threads. Food twitter will, and stuff like that.