> This is a plan years in the making. And we're watching Meta's biggest hurdle play out in real-time.<p>No.<p>Threads was not planned. Meta really really struggles with any long term execution.<p>Threads was the last of the "bottoms up" initiatives[0]. Had this been a properly sanctioned "bet" from the "product council"[1], they would have stuffed 200 engineers on it from the start and let them fight about scope until the money ran out (see most of the internal VR products, AR glasses, genAI, that crypto currency, market place, dating, etc)<p>Threads.net will never really truly be interoperable with mastodon for any particular length of time. As soon as shit like porn/spam/fraud starts to float around in high enough numbers to make someone important notice, the federation will be toned down.<p>Or, more likely, some "lead" engineer will want to put in a new feature to get themselves promoted and make a change that's not compatible with the wider fediverse.<p>Facebook cannot execute in any new market particularly well or fast. Threads was a fluke. It was one of the only self made products that actually taken off.<p>> But here's the question— why ActivityPub?<p>I suspect, and from what I've heard, is that threads is basically some horrid bastardisation of mastodon with the data store ported to facebook's internal graph store. It was done mostly for speed, so they could get something working to demo to the higher ups.<p>Now, that threads has numbers (so I assume) they will flood it with engineers, who will start adding useless ill-thought out featurettes that get promotions and move micro metrics, but degrade the entire platform.<p>[0] they are trying to steer to a central control system, but the problem is that nobody can plan. Those that can can't function because they've not been at facebook long enough to know who to wank off to get buy in.<p>[1]or what ever its called now, Cox's circle jerk, but less obviously taking the piss<p>> But he can't not grow the company. Wall Street won't allow it. And he can't grow it through acquisition because of anti-trust. He's stuck.<p>No, Zuck knows his bollocks are stapled to both google and apple. moreover FB/Insta have a limited shelf life. In order to survive, zuck has to own the next platform. His bet is that platform is AR/VR.<p>Hence why oculus is being pumped full of cash.