Shipping Threads in 5 months(infoq.com)
infoq.com
Shipping Threads in 5 months
https://www.infoq.com/presentations/threads-meta/
47 comments
Haskell piece is fascinating. iirc, they have been using Haskell for many years for content moderation.
Classic article on this: https://engineering.fb.com/2015/06/26/security/fighting-spam...
6 months ago. 192 comments: https://www.infoq.com/news/2024/04/meta-threads-instagram-5-...
I think you meant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39987466
Given that the sum total of their four goals is a text based social network that is interoperable with the fediverse wouldn't the natural codebase to start from be Mastadon? I'm sure using IG came with a lot of benefits but given they had to punt on the fediverse interop, their most important thing outside of Threads working, starting with a base that speaks the protocol you want to adopt has got to count for something.
Mastodon is not very scalable if you want to host tens of millions of users.
More so given that Threads has goals of a billion users.
Very few companies other than Meta have experience in a scaling a platform to this extent.
And especially one that has the capabilities that scale along with it e.g. recommendation, trust & safety moderation etc.
Very few companies other than Meta have experience in a scaling a platform to this extent.
And especially one that has the capabilities that scale along with it e.g. recommendation, trust & safety moderation etc.
Speculatively, I think Mastodon being AGPL could have played some role here
TLDR; Reused Instagram code + infra and server driven UI.
Yeah not sure how that is starting from 0.
0.999... to 1 development.
It isn't. Instagram logo and urls still show up in all kinds of random places.
Moderation has been a disaster (my account got banned for a week twice for some random person not liking what I wrote. So that's not conducive to being a 'discussion' platform).
And now I am starting to see tons of shit Russian bots ("0 Follower accounts with right wing views"). Same as Twitter really.
I'm confused. Where's the postmortem on how Threads failed? Why is this talk structured like a victory lap?
In a time when users wanted to flee Twitter desperately, they could have launched a clone and likely won. Instead, they "kept it simple". They lacked even the most basic features, to the point where you signed up for Threads and found nothing at all which turned users away.
This is a talk about how to launch a successful app!? That seems totally disconnected from reality. No one should be learning any positive lessons from this.
In a time when users wanted to flee Twitter desperately, they could have launched a clone and likely won. Instead, they "kept it simple". They lacked even the most basic features, to the point where you signed up for Threads and found nothing at all which turned users away.
This is a talk about how to launch a successful app!? That seems totally disconnected from reality. No one should be learning any positive lessons from this.
This comment makes no sense. How has Threads failed? It's literally the #1 free app on the App Store right now and has been for a while.
On the business side, I am with you and I don't use Threads at all (or know anyone in my circle who does)
This talk is from a technical perspective - and whatever your thoughts on Threads are, it is a great technical feat to launch something of that scale in 5 months!
Can't think of any company that comes close to Meta in the speed of shipping features and products, and Threads app is the best example
This talk is from a technical perspective - and whatever your thoughts on Threads are, it is a great technical feat to launch something of that scale in 5 months!
Can't think of any company that comes close to Meta in the speed of shipping features and products, and Threads app is the best example
In the Q2 earnings call in July, Meta said that Threads had reached 200 MAU.
Which is about half of X which has seen declining growth and revenue since Musk took over.
So by every definition it has been very successful given how long it's been around.
Which is about half of X which has seen declining growth and revenue since Musk took over.
So by every definition it has been very successful given how long it's been around.
A whole 200? Based on the the number of people I know who've ever used it (no one), I believe it.
Don't believe your negative thoughts then, according to https://www.threads.net/@zuck/post/C89oeSORn81 Threads had over 175 million monthly active users this July.
Via https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads_(social_network)
Via https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads_(social_network)
The parent is making a joke as the grandparent missed the 'M' after 200.
So it reads as 200 monthly active users. Rather than 200M (million) monthly active users.
So it reads as 200 monthly active users. Rather than 200M (million) monthly active users.
I suspect you missed a multiplier.. K? M?
Monthly Active Users. Standard metric for measuring usage.
Yes... but this specific post will have >200 DAU.. 200 MAU is nothing.
I assume 200 million since it was reported before in Q2 they were at 175 million MAU, but not the person you're replying to.
This would appear to be the quote they're referencing:
> Another bright spot is Threads, which is about to hit 200 million monthly actives.
https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2024/q2...
(I'm assuming this transcript is accurate but have made no effort to verify.)
> Another bright spot is Threads, which is about to hit 200 million monthly actives.
https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2024/q2...
(I'm assuming this transcript is accurate but have made no effort to verify.)
It's a huge success, you're just not paying attention. In terms of feature it's been getting better and better every week since launch. These guys can ship
Just looked at the Apple App store and it's #1 in the Free Apps ranking lol
It's actually wildly successful and most companies would kill to have a social media platform with that level of success.
On the play store it's #2 in the charts ahead of ChatGPT, behind Temu.
Perhaps you need to rethink your definition of success and failure. It's objectively a successful platform launch.
On the play store it's #2 in the charts ahead of ChatGPT, behind Temu.
Perhaps you need to rethink your definition of success and failure. It's objectively a successful platform launch.
Sure. That's why Brazil fled to Bluesky instead of Threads when Twitter was blocked. It's probably successful among boomers and whoever already has another account with meta.
I'm not sure how that's entirely relevant. Success of another platform doesn't imply failure of another platform. It's also relatively common for different regions of the world to settle into different social media networks and messaging systems. See: Whatsapp vs iMessage, VKontakte, WeChat, telegram and so on.
There's plenty of metrics to support the fact that Threads is a successful launch.
There's plenty of metrics to support the fact that Threads is a successful launch.
So just like half the world’s population then. Pretty much a total failure.
More like 175M Threads users alone. They have already been set up for success given Meta's userbase. Now they have to herd that demographic among their different apps, so it was only logical to have a Twitter alternative in order to retain their usebase and profit from Elon's task oriented leadership that has materialized in Xwitter shedding users.
So a platform is a failure unless it appeals to zoomers?
In the 2000s the population of the internet, even though pretty mainstream by then, was still made up of enough proactive, deliberate, conscientious people to be able to trigger a MySpace to Facebook type migration.
On today's internet it's no longer possible. The full population is here and it's overall too passive and docile. The biggest sites won't be disrupted anymore. Twitter is certainly deprecated. But just like our uncles and grandparents will keep Facebook alive for 20 more years, so it will be with Twitter. Threads was never going to be able to change that.
On today's internet it's no longer possible. The full population is here and it's overall too passive and docile. The biggest sites won't be disrupted anymore. Twitter is certainly deprecated. But just like our uncles and grandparents will keep Facebook alive for 20 more years, so it will be with Twitter. Threads was never going to be able to change that.
0->1
Except for the part where Meta used the immense network effects of Facebook and Instagram to repeatedly advertise Threads to their audience and harass them into trying it out.
This is more like slowing the 100->0 transition.
Except for the part where Meta used the immense network effects of Facebook and Instagram to repeatedly advertise Threads to their audience and harass them into trying it out.
This is more like slowing the 100->0 transition.
Not to mention it was well timed with fury against Twitter. And there was (still is) no way to close your Threads account. And instant onboarding
It's pretty bad. AOL for 2024. Absolutely braindead users though it's hyper-leftist (read: the anti-Twitter) if you're into that. Riddled with engagement spam and people posting generic questions ("what's a good restaurant in [city]") instead of googling.
Yes, I had to stop using it after most posts were basically complaining about Twitter and Elon. If I wanted to read about those topics, I'd, well, be on Twitter.
Hyper-leftist is anti-twitter now? Last time I checked (about 2 minutes ago), twitter was hyper-leftist itself.
People love to complain on the internet. Apparently, Twitter now is the cause of the rise of global fascism.
Apparently, Twitter now is hyper-leftist. [1]
[1] The comment you're repling to.
[1] The comment you're repling to.
Yeah, the media [1] disagree ;)
[1] https://theconversation.com/from-twitter-to-x-one-year-on-ar...
[1] https://theconversation.com/from-twitter-to-x-one-year-on-ar...
I'm not impressed. I can totally imagine single person building the app under 5 months.
Well, of course, it will not have the best UI or recommendation algorithm or marketing stuff, but I don't think those are in the critical path on the building of the app. I expected that a company like Meta can build apps like this in weeks.
It got me thinking that, in terms of building software 0 to 1, maybe the scalability of head count is surprisingly low.
It got me thinking that, in terms of building software 0 to 1, maybe the scalability of head count is surprisingly low.
[deleted]
> I expected that a company like Meta can build apps like this in weeks.
Why not a day?
Why not a day?
> One technique we use to tune the experience quickly was to make iteration in the product itself very easy. We did this using server driven UI. In a traditional client-server model, the client is responsible for everything about how the data is laid out on-screen. The server is just middleware pulling data out from stores. What we did was for the core interfaces which showed a list of posts, we instead sent down a full view model, which told the client exactly how to render it.
> This meant that when we were experimenting on the call to action and the reply bar, or when and how we show different reply face files, we could do that with just a code change on the server, which only takes a couple of hours to roll out and takes effect on all platforms.
> This let us iterate on the core Threading UI very quickly in the early days.