For people that come straight to the comments – Threads was also what Instagram called a standalone messaging app that they introduced in 2019 and never took off. They shut it down at the end of 2021, which is what this article references.
Apparently they've re-designed it a bit (or started over from scratch) to turn it into a Twitter competitor now that Twitter is a bit... turbulent, and are relaunching in a few days (which is currently being discussed on HN here[1]).
Might've been better to just start with a fresh name rather than resuscitating a brand that has already failed once, but what do I know?
I’d never heard about it before the news that a “new” Threads was coming and I’m reasonably online ;)
I’d say the general public don’t know or care about the failed version but will find it easy to try the new one. This is probably the biggest threat to Bluesky gaining tracktion. At least in the medium term.
The name is pretty good too. Instantly conveys it’s purpose.
Seems like they keep restarting and testing new things and failing. I was looking into Threads and there's all these variations, and this one's probably going to suffer the same fate.
BUT, we shouldn't knock them for trying; that's what startups are all about, right?
> BUT, we shouldn't knock them for trying; that's what startups are all about, right?
I am so conflicted about this sentiment. On the one hand, I’m a fan of competition. On another, I dislike the company that is (re-?)entering the market.
I guess I just wish an actual start up were coming in, but I guess that era is over. Consolidation has been successful, and now we’re in this weird world where 5-10 giant megacorps run everything we engage with.
I got to be on the early BETA for this as we were doing some stuff for Google. I thought it was the future and registered loads of domains for things I liked suffixed with "wave" thinking it would be possible to create personal or community focused waves in the future.
Alas it didn't work out.
It's hard to remember how good it was, I remember it being better than Slack, Teams and Discord are now. But maybe that's a false memory.
I'm always surprised to see wave mentioned in the context of social media. I always thought of it as a better form of document/knowledge collaboration.
The original Threads was not photo focused. I almost never sent a photo and I was a heavy user. It's primarily for texting people on Instagram without seeing Instagram's algorithmic junk and ads.
and that's why it was shut down. It can make no money if it accomplishes its goal perfectly with no obvious way to insert ads.
Weird how it was running on the same network with the same name, but not filling the same purpose. So this is really more just a curiosity. It would have been much stranger if Threads was actually the same thing and now relaunched.
20 years in the future, Instagram Threads, in its 5th iteration, will become Instagram for Knitting, following (and desperately copying) the meteoric rise of decacorn Ravelry
Readit News
For people that come straight to the comments – Threads was also what Instagram called a standalone messaging app that they introduced in 2019 and never took off. They shut it down at the end of 2021, which is what this article references.
Apparently they've re-designed it a bit (or started over from scratch) to turn it into a Twitter competitor now that Twitter is a bit... turbulent, and are relaunching in a few days (which is currently being discussed on HN here[1]).
Might've been better to just start with a fresh name rather than resuscitating a brand that has already failed once, but what do I know?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36580192
I’d say the general public don’t know or care about the failed version but will find it easy to try the new one. This is probably the biggest threat to Bluesky gaining tracktion. At least in the medium term.
The name is pretty good too. Instantly conveys it’s purpose.
BUT, we shouldn't knock them for trying; that's what startups are all about, right?
I am so conflicted about this sentiment. On the one hand, I’m a fan of competition. On another, I dislike the company that is (re-?)entering the market.
I guess I just wish an actual start up were coming in, but I guess that era is over. Consolidation has been successful, and now we’re in this weird world where 5-10 giant megacorps run everything we engage with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1qzIEJAFww
Alas it didn't work out.
It's hard to remember how good it was, I remember it being better than Slack, Teams and Discord are now. But maybe that's a false memory.
and that's why it was shut down. It can make no money if it accomplishes its goal perfectly with no obvious way to insert ads.
It's generally very hard for me to tell whether a social media app is popular, I can't even keep track of which apps exist anymore, apparently.