Instant Messenger History: Lessons for the Threads Era of Social Media(tedium.co)
tedium.co
Instant Messenger History: Lessons for the Threads Era of Social Media
https://tedium.co/2023/07/12/instant-messenger-competition-history/
78 comments
Back in the day I had accounts on AIM and MSN Messenger, accounts on at least half a dozen various forums powered by Invision and phpBB, accounts on half a dozen IRC networks, and it felt perfectly fine to go from one to the other as the situation demanded. I'm not even including MMORPGs, which were as much communities as they were games.
Nowadays I still use IRC like I used to before, but I miss the rest of the good old days.
Nowadays I still use IRC like I used to before, but I miss the rest of the good old days.
What’s the scene like on IRC these days?
Not anywhere as populated as before, but the old guard is still there and the atmosphere itself hasn't really changed (which is a good thing).
I credit the fundamentally command line interface for filtering out the "normies", so to speak.
I credit the fundamentally command line interface for filtering out the "normies", so to speak.
It is if they target the same use case. I resent having to use WhatsApp alongside Signal. And iMessage and SMS. Want to review the conversation you had with so-and-so the other day ? You have to check multiple apps if you forgot where.
I miss Trillian. I miss standards.
I miss Trillian. I miss standards.
Few of the protocols that Trillian spoke were standardized; most were reverse engineered. It was an era of adversarial interoperability, not standards.
I miss it too, though.
I miss it too, though.
That's ironic. At least in the brief time I used Windows, Trillian had the worst dumpster fire of a UI. I can't say I really liked Windows UI, but they didn't even attempt to conform to it to make it half-usable.
That's funny because the UI is one thing I think stood out positively about Trillian but that might be my rose-tinted glasses and youthful tastes talking.
Nah, I used Trillian (Lifetime licence) until just a few years ago when I realized that everyone is siloed in Signal, WA, etc. The UI was still great.
But that might be related to me hating the UI of WA, Signal, Telegram etc. Even Gajim switched to this shitty UI style (sidenote: Any usable Windows XMPP/Jabber client that still looks good, with good = "userlist, plus chats in separate windows"?), so I’m starting to think it might be possible that most people don’t hate it ;)
edit: There’s AstraChat which looks nice and apparently supports WA, alas, it’s commercial, and they don’t seem interested in selling to non-enterprise users.
But that might be related to me hating the UI of WA, Signal, Telegram etc. Even Gajim switched to this shitty UI style (sidenote: Any usable Windows XMPP/Jabber client that still looks good, with good = "userlist, plus chats in separate windows"?), so I’m starting to think it might be possible that most people don’t hate it ;)
edit: There’s AstraChat which looks nice and apparently supports WA, alas, it’s commercial, and they don’t seem interested in selling to non-enterprise users.
I wish I could remember the details of why I thought it was so awful. I mean, not even the title bar and minimize/maximize icon conformed to the Windows standards. There were other things that didn't work right-- standard windows keyboard shortcuts-- but I forget which. This would have been in 2006-2010 or thereabouts.
I remember it was non-standard too, but that's why I liked it; Windows didn't look nice to begin with.
IIRC it had skins and plugins so you could customize the UI.
Imagine a 20th century where people with telephones from GE couldn't phone people with telephones from RCA. That's obviously ridiculous and regulations prevented it.
How the hell did we went up here?
How the hell did we went up here?
End up where? Phones from different manufacturers can still contact each other.
You can send data from any device to any device.
You can send data from any device to any device.
That will will be fixed Q1 next year thanks to the EU
[deleted]
A fractured microblogging ecosystem doesn’t bother me at all because I never use any of them directly. Like many here, I assume, I use link aggregators (like HN, Reddit, and many others).
> John Gruber... has suggested... instant messaging was a dead-end technology
I use Signal and WhatsApp daily. Most people I know use some sort of IM, though for some of them it's only iMessage.
It's interesting and a little surprising that none of the PC-based instant messaging services popular in the early 2000s were successful in making the jump to mobile, though some did produce mobile clients.
I use Signal and WhatsApp daily. Most people I know use some sort of IM, though for some of them it's only iMessage.
It's interesting and a little surprising that none of the PC-based instant messaging services popular in the early 2000s were successful in making the jump to mobile, though some did produce mobile clients.
It's quite surprising that none of them Desktop leaders were able to leverage their network effect to move to Mobile. Through it's important to note that the mobile leaders today bootstrapped off the phone book.
Facebook messenger was quite something through. They bundled messenging into the Facebook app to get the network effect, then use the network effect to get people to install a separate messenger app.
Facebook messenger was quite something through. They bundled messenging into the Facebook app to get the network effect, then use the network effect to get people to install a separate messenger app.
they also now make it impossible (or at least very hard) to use messenger on a phone without installing their app. I rarely use fb except for marketplace and was meeting up with someone, i tried to use a browser like you can on a computer and nope had to install the app
Mobile providers had no incentive to let the instant messaging services on their network when they were charging 10 cents per SMS message.
I'm pretty sure the major messengers all had integrations with at least US mobile providers. Because if you didn't have a messaging plan, you'd get charged 10 cents per message as it was delivered over SMS.
IMHO, the reason a mobile first network was more compelling than a desktop first network is that people tend to have their phones on them, while their desktops tend to be at their desks. For better or worse, you can always reach me on my phone.
Tencent developed QQ on desktop and then WeChat on mobile, but afaik, didn't bridge the two networks.
IMHO, the reason a mobile first network was more compelling than a desktop first network is that people tend to have their phones on them, while their desktops tend to be at their desks. For better or worse, you can always reach me on my phone.
Tencent developed QQ on desktop and then WeChat on mobile, but afaik, didn't bridge the two networks.
They all sucked. Sometimes it's that simple. Skype was the least bad when you were using it on a phone as well, and so it hung around right up until Zoom came along. But most instant messengers were bad, especially XMPP-based ones, and there was a lot of pressure to use XMPP. That's what killed the whole market.
> It's interesting and a little surprising that none of the PC-based instant messaging services popular in the early 2000s were successful in making the jump to mobile
I've read that it comes down to how at the time of the shift, companies were realizing that there was just no money in running IM networks, so they were unwilling to invest much in them.
I've read that it comes down to how at the time of the shift, companies were realizing that there was just no money in running IM networks, so they were unwilling to invest much in them.
Threads is an entire era now? Surely it's a liiiiittle too early to make that claim.
I think it's fair to say that we have a post-twitter, or elon-twitter era when all of a sudden Twitter has a bunch of competition that it's never really had before. I wouldn't say it's Threads' era, but it does seem like something has happened.
Something has to be said about about the fact that now Meta decided to launch a Twitter clone.
Something has to be said about about the fact that now Meta decided to launch a Twitter clone.
Why?
Did something have to be said when Google launched Google+? Or any of the other social platforms?
My memory is hazy of those years, but I do think it was a bit different.
IIRC, G+ was a defensive maneuver. G was terrified of FB, who was executing successfully on many fronts and putting pressure on advertising revenues. And so G tried to make G+ happen.
By contrast, in this case, Twitter keeps shooting itself in the foot. (I guess that's what happens when you lay off huge swaths of the company and demand that engineers print out their code on paper.) So Threads (and others) are moving into the vacuum that's been created.
So things right now feel like much more of a competitive land-grab, and it's not entirely clear who's going to win (or even why/how they'll win, or even what the victory conditions look like).
IIRC, G+ was a defensive maneuver. G was terrified of FB, who was executing successfully on many fronts and putting pressure on advertising revenues. And so G tried to make G+ happen.
By contrast, in this case, Twitter keeps shooting itself in the foot. (I guess that's what happens when you lay off huge swaths of the company and demand that engineers print out their code on paper.) So Threads (and others) are moving into the vacuum that's been created.
So things right now feel like much more of a competitive land-grab, and it's not entirely clear who's going to win (or even why/how they'll win, or even what the victory conditions look like).
Yes that was definitely an era of its own when there was lots of stiff competition for social networks.
but Twitter didn't even matter when it was just Twitter. Twitter was a minor, failing social media site up until Musk bought it.
I can't argue with this:
> Twitter was a minor, failing social media site up until Musk bought it.
Maybe "slowly failing", accelerating after the purchase.
But I slightly disagree with this:
> Twitter didn't even matter when it was just Twitter.
I think twitter was disproportionally more significant, though not as hugely so as its denizens believed. If there were a graph of "number of subscribers" (X) vs "influence over Zeitgeist" (Y), Twitter would appear a little above the curve.
The reason is that a lot of journalists corresponded on it so things discussed on it would appear in the press.
I started using it last summer or so -- a few months before the sale. I never (and don't) like the short form. I'm more likely to see something outside my "bubble" on TW than FB, but frankly FB is more useful to me (I just want to know news about my friends and family, and their kids, basically, plus cat and dog pictures). Climate Twitter is pretty good; for some reason the same kind of thing doesn't appear on FB (Machinist FB is good and there appears to be no Machinist Twitter that I can find).
If this sounds like a defense of twitter: it isn't. I'm just saying that "didn't matter" is probably too absolute. It never mattered a lot, though.
> Twitter was a minor, failing social media site up until Musk bought it.
Maybe "slowly failing", accelerating after the purchase.
But I slightly disagree with this:
> Twitter didn't even matter when it was just Twitter.
I think twitter was disproportionally more significant, though not as hugely so as its denizens believed. If there were a graph of "number of subscribers" (X) vs "influence over Zeitgeist" (Y), Twitter would appear a little above the curve.
The reason is that a lot of journalists corresponded on it so things discussed on it would appear in the press.
I started using it last summer or so -- a few months before the sale. I never (and don't) like the short form. I'm more likely to see something outside my "bubble" on TW than FB, but frankly FB is more useful to me (I just want to know news about my friends and family, and their kids, basically, plus cat and dog pictures). Climate Twitter is pretty good; for some reason the same kind of thing doesn't appear on FB (Machinist FB is good and there appears to be no Machinist Twitter that I can find).
If this sounds like a defense of twitter: it isn't. I'm just saying that "didn't matter" is probably too absolute. It never mattered a lot, though.
> Twitter was a minor, failing social media site up until Musk bought it.
Twitter was anything but a minor player in the social media space. Financially, it was treading water due to the difficulty of monetizing its userbase.
What doomed the site was the Elon purchase. The additional debt has basically ensured the sites deterioration, long before Elon started alienating his advertisers and demonstrating his lack of commitment to free speech.
Twitter was anything but a minor player in the social media space. Financially, it was treading water due to the difficulty of monetizing its userbase.
What doomed the site was the Elon purchase. The additional debt has basically ensured the sites deterioration, long before Elon started alienating his advertisers and demonstrating his lack of commitment to free speech.
If there's any platform where famous people talk to each other and even sometimes to non-famous people, Twitter is it -- even now.
not sure that's been corrected yet. Seems to be becoming more minor and more failing
I'm guessing they're financially healthier on the opex side of things than they've ever been. I mean, they've never been profitable, the revenue loss was reactionary and it's not crazy to think that will come back as Twitter hits record user minute metrics and such. Thread is probably going to be robbing its own revenue from other Meta platforms more than Twitter's, I'm guessing.
I read somebody today remarking that Twitter was an indignation machine, but I think twitter is very productive if you're following people who produce content or information rather than following political pundits and reporters.
I read somebody today remarking that Twitter was an indignation machine, but I think twitter is very productive if you're following people who produce content or information rather than following political pundits and reporters.
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By what metric?
The increased number of viable competitors (in terms of mind-share, I'm not suggesting there has been significant movement in terms of capabilities in the last twelve months) and the level of interested in then certainly makes twitter's position rather less comfortable than it might otherwise have been.
There certainly seemed to be a number of advertisers who reduced, or entirely removed, their commitments to purchase space on the platform. While many have since reversed somewhat on that, many have not or have not completely unless there has been a major change this quarter (the just full figures I've seen reported in were for 2023Q2 and IIRC the total advertising sales were down >55% compared to 2022Q2).
That is two fairly negative indicators with demonstrable evidence. Do you have any positive metrics in mind?
There certainly seemed to be a number of advertisers who reduced, or entirely removed, their commitments to purchase space on the platform. While many have since reversed somewhat on that, many have not or have not completely unless there has been a major change this quarter (the just full figures I've seen reported in were for 2023Q2 and IIRC the total advertising sales were down >55% compared to 2022Q2).
That is two fairly negative indicators with demonstrable evidence. Do you have any positive metrics in mind?
Twitter mattered to the thinking/writing class. It had a big influence on journalism and the kinds of people who write think pieces or tutorials or posts that get widely read by people like those who read HN. A relatively small amount of force, but applied to just the right place, you know...
A lot of frequent HN commenters had or have Twitter followings and view/ed themselves as Twitter influencers. Even though Twitter didn't matter that much for most people, to this crowd it matters a lot, and likewise creators whose blogs and platforms get posted on HN.
It has amassed 110 million users in a week. It feels like the start of something new and noteworthy. Maybe "era" isn't the right word, but I think we can still take away the message they're trying to convey.
100% they hit the right timing. People were looking to move into another platform.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=t...
My working theory is that because the nature of relationships on Twitter and IG (seed data for Threads) is different, the conversations will be different. If anything, Threads is going to be a hotspot for memes and pic-based content bc the pic features are way better already.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=t...
My working theory is that because the nature of relationships on Twitter and IG (seed data for Threads) is different, the conversations will be different. If anything, Threads is going to be a hotspot for memes and pic-based content bc the pic features are way better already.
Yes, it has given everyone who already had a Meta account, a new Meta account... so that's hardly an achievement for a platform with THREE BILLION USERS?
(Because 110 million is basically "no one" compared to the full FB userbase. It's just the statistical "a small percentage of a fuckton of people is still a lot of people")
is it active?
Because it sure doesn't sound like it is.
(Because 110 million is basically "no one" compared to the full FB userbase. It's just the statistical "a small percentage of a fuckton of people is still a lot of people")
is it active?
Because it sure doesn't sound like it is.
~3% adoption in days? I wish I saw those numbers in the "cross-enrolment" ventures I work on, even if the resulting users are not active. And I'm talking about rolling new features, not expecting users to download another app.
I'm sure you do, but what numbers mean changes once you have literal billions of users. 3% is nothing. 3% active dailies, that would be something, but that's absolutely not what we're dealing with here. These are just click-through signups.
I don't think you actually know the daily actives, right? You're just guessing that the sign ups are churning at a high rate? I have no idea either way, because I've only seen reporting on the sign up numbers, not the actives numbers. Have you seen something I haven't?
Apparently. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/13/meta-threads-engagement-has-... and a whole bunch of other places, which are tracking the drop off now that the shiny's worn off and we're all discovering is still shit. Less than 40m active users, and not a lot of time spent even by those. And no reason to think that trend isn't going to keep up for a while longer.
Thank you for the link!
How many million users will it have next week? That's the real test, not just a new button appearing in an app where people tend to doom-scroll for hours.
Can I get a bet of expounding on this?
I have nearly non-existent social media footprint, so please enlighten me.
How do we know that these 110mm users amassed were not just user accounts from existing Meta portfolio systems?
I have nearly non-existent social media footprint, so please enlighten me.
How do we know that these 110mm users amassed were not just user accounts from existing Meta portfolio systems?
We know that they almost entirely were existing Instagram accounts. The was the entire strategy...
maybe, but massing users is not the same as massing people who actually use it. They just tied it to instagram no? It doesnt mean these users that clicked a button will actually use threads
Correct. The 110 million users needs to have a huge asterisk next to it. I signed up for Threads to see what it was like. Haven't gotten back on since. Obviously plenty of people have. But that 110 million number is basically meaningless without knowing how many people have used it a second or third time.
And you will continue to be a user because if you delete your account, your instagram goes too.
More of Zuck cheating at life.
More of Zuck cheating at life.
Not that I'm one to defend Facebook and it's robotic overlord, but that sort of essentially meaningless user counting is commonplace. What proportion of twitter's official user count are regularly active and how many have not touched it at all recently?
I agree completely. I'm trying to highlight that this is a particularly egregious way of counting users. I fully expect that if this continues past a few months, then shareholders will demand real numbers ("active" users) as you mention to in your comment.
>They just tied it to instagram no?
No, it is a seperate app that users have to get from their device's respective app store. After you download the app you are given the option to login with your Instagram account. After authenticating you are then asked to setup rest of your profile like setting your bio, website, and importing follows. Google and Facebook provide oauth libraries for Android, iOS, and web that could similarly be used to let people log in with an account they already have.
No, it is a seperate app that users have to get from their device's respective app store. After you download the app you are given the option to login with your Instagram account. After authenticating you are then asked to setup rest of your profile like setting your bio, website, and importing follows. Google and Facebook provide oauth libraries for Android, iOS, and web that could similarly be used to let people log in with an account they already have.
The argument, broadly, is that in the marketplace 2/3/4/5 years ago - anyone who launched a twitter clone, be it facebook, google, apple or god themself, was not going to get millions of users on day 1 and on day 2 would probably be shutting down.
Various changes in the market place have opened up things, possibly to more competition, posisibly to less, but a new era nevertheless.
Various changes in the market place have opened up things, possibly to more competition, posisibly to less, but a new era nevertheless.
There is no such thing as "a marketplace" when we're talking about a product with a user base of 3 billion users. There is no generalizing here: an immensely vast user base (with numbers you can't even phathom) was presented with a new service, signups for which had no downsides to click-through.
This is nothing like "clone apps" on a "marketplace". This is Facebook pushing an app out, and the world pretending it's somehow not just another Facebook app that BY DEFAULT will have several percent of the Facebook/Insta userbase signing up because, again, there is no downside.
Feeling cute, might cancel later.
Except cancelling turns out to be a mild inconvenience compared to signing up, so people won't bother.
This is nothing like "clone apps" on a "marketplace". This is Facebook pushing an app out, and the world pretending it's somehow not just another Facebook app that BY DEFAULT will have several percent of the Facebook/Insta userbase signing up because, again, there is no downside.
Feeling cute, might cancel later.
Except cancelling turns out to be a mild inconvenience compared to signing up, so people won't bother.
It threads is basically successful (say 20 million people stay engaged) and it joins with the Fedi successfully I won’t feel bad about them calling it the “Threads era”.
I wouldn’t take either of the above for granted but I wouldn’t think either is impossible. What puzzles me the most is that Threads is seemingly 50 times larger than the Fedi already at which point there doesn’t seem to be any point in Thread joining it. Many people on the Fedi want to block Threads for various reasons, not least because some people don’t want to share a social network with anyone who disagrees with them, but also Threads doesn’t support features that are important to anyone who takes Fedi participation series such as image alt text and hashtags.
I wouldn’t take either of the above for granted but I wouldn’t think either is impossible. What puzzles me the most is that Threads is seemingly 50 times larger than the Fedi already at which point there doesn’t seem to be any point in Thread joining it. Many people on the Fedi want to block Threads for various reasons, not least because some people don’t want to share a social network with anyone who disagrees with them, but also Threads doesn’t support features that are important to anyone who takes Fedi participation series such as image alt text and hashtags.
Maybe it's fair? It's the first major persistent broadcast messaging platform since Twitter popularized the concept with non-computer nerds.
"Maybe" isn't good enough.
Indeed. What lawyers call "assuming a fact not in evidence".
Way too early
current pidgin lead developer has been writing rather entertaining posts on pidgin and generally im history:
https://dev.to/grim
e.g. https://dev.to/grim/where-did-the-name-libpurple-come-from-4...
https://dev.to/grim
e.g. https://dev.to/grim/where-did-the-name-libpurple-come-from-4...
Y'all remember when back in the 2000's there was so many IM apps that people made tools like Meebo to organize them all into one messenger utility?
Why isn't there just one giant firehose API which merges all the socials into one intake feed. Then I could filter it down for useful data and discard the rest. This probably already exists, but, just my thoughts from the article!
Why isn't there just one giant firehose API which merges all the socials into one intake feed. Then I could filter it down for useful data and discard the rest. This probably already exists, but, just my thoughts from the article!
I would absolutely love to run my own little TOC/OSCAR server and host my own private AIM community. The only implementation I found is the closed-source AIM Phoenix project, is anyone aware of one?
There is no Threads era
Jesus, another whiny Musk ruined everything sap.
Twitter hasn't changed a bit other than no longer perma banning.
You wouldn't even know its under new management if mainstream media didn't put the agenda in your heads.
And for the love of god, we don't need another Meta social media platform or anything else for that matter. If Musk is cancer Meta is the cerebral palsy, Parkinson’s, ALS suite.
Twitter hasn't changed a bit other than no longer perma banning.
You wouldn't even know its under new management if mainstream media didn't put the agenda in your heads.
And for the love of god, we don't need another Meta social media platform or anything else for that matter. If Musk is cancer Meta is the cerebral palsy, Parkinson’s, ALS suite.
I'm not sure if this is Musk-related, but Twitter has definitely changed.
* More ads, not as easy to hide them with traditional blocker
* More bots - I'm a baseball fan and follow a lot of baseball people, and players in particular are big on custom tshirts that are only usually sold by a special MLB-licensed vendor. However, there will be tweets with a photo or video and multiple replies by scam bots saying "tshirt available at xyz.example!!" and then a plethora more bots replying to that thread saying "thanks just ordered mine!" or variations of that
* Not sure if "bot", but there are a few OnlyFans style bots or even maybe just users where I constantly see them reply tweets but only one at a time; I block them every time because I'm not interested, only for another variation with slightly different name but the same "person" showing up the next day or so.
I don't know what's changed for those things to happen, but they've definitely increased or outright started just in the past year.
* More ads, not as easy to hide them with traditional blocker
* More bots - I'm a baseball fan and follow a lot of baseball people, and players in particular are big on custom tshirts that are only usually sold by a special MLB-licensed vendor. However, there will be tweets with a photo or video and multiple replies by scam bots saying "tshirt available at xyz.example!!" and then a plethora more bots replying to that thread saying "thanks just ordered mine!" or variations of that
* Not sure if "bot", but there are a few OnlyFans style bots or even maybe just users where I constantly see them reply tweets but only one at a time; I block them every time because I'm not interested, only for another variation with slightly different name but the same "person" showing up the next day or so.
I don't know what's changed for those things to happen, but they've definitely increased or outright started just in the past year.
>You wouldn't even know its under new management if mainstream media didn't put the agenda in your heads.
Aside from Musk pushing his own tweets in your feed?
Aside from Musk pushing his own tweets in your feed?
Or all the ignorant blue check top responses to any popular tweet. You wouldn't know it's under new management only if you'd never been there before.
I mean, I used to go read new tweets from a few accounts every once in awhile, and now I suddenly can't do that without making an account. So now I don't go there at all, which is a pretty big change for me...
I don't think multiple social networks is a problem. I don't want one network that everyone is on. Let them be split up by interest or age or whatever. It's natural.
What I post on HN isn't what I would post on "Social Network X" anyway, there's no need for syndication. The only people that need to care about having their comments go everywhere are influencers and marketers - and who cares what they want.