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Re:Threads, an Instagram App by interestica on Monday July 03, 2023 @09:50PM (#36581172)
I feel like Twitter could have launched “Nests” (flocks?) to replace subreddits in the face of a Reddit exodus and pretty much just reskinned twitter for the specific use case. Hashtags as top level organizing taxonomy (to replace subreddit). Then tweets as your “posts” with nested replies. Twitter had the infrastructure to just hit the ground running too.
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by worrycue on Monday July 03, 2023 @10:32PM (#36581495)
They are rate limiting the viewing of tweets now. No way they have the capacity to handle Reddit’s content.

Maybe Google can try replicating Reddit in YouTube - it would just be serving text instead of video; discovery would be via their recommendation algorithm, i.e. no subreddits. Frankly, they can kind of already do this, you can post community messages on YouTube. They just need to tweak the algorithm to recommend such messages.

Re:Threads, an Instagram App by troupo on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @02:12AM (#36582837)
> Maybe Google can try replicating Reddit in YouTube

They can't. Google as an organization just doesn't understand social networking.

They've had comments and forums (community?) for ages. Do you know how to engage in that community? Do you know how to even track your own comments? Etc.

Re:Threads, an Instagram App by worrycue on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @02:35AM (#36582993)
> Do you know how to even track your own comments?

On YouTube actually yes, it’s in “History”. :P

Re:Threads, an Instagram App by troupo on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @02:46AM (#36583069)
Not in the app :)

And on the web IIRC it doesn't show any replies to your comments. And if you click on your comment, there's a 50/50 chance Youtube will not show it to you under the video :)

Re:Threads, an Instagram App by astrange on Monday July 03, 2023 @10:21PM (#36581419)
Nobody uses hashtags anymore. You can actually tell when someone is a clueless LinkedIn refugee because they hashtag random words in their sentences.
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by jeremyjh on Monday July 03, 2023 @10:42PM (#36581558)
Interest groups do.
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by sgc on Monday July 03, 2023 @11:20PM (#36581787)
It's a good way to follow Ukrainian news, for example (#ukraine, #ukrainewar). It definitely has its place.
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by astrange on Monday July 03, 2023 @11:28PM (#36581838)
I prefer using lists or trustworthy OSINT accounts for that.

My impression is Twitter search 1. is now smart enough it doesn't need hashtags to assist it but 2. due to policy choices doesn't work.

Namely, searching for term X returns both "posts containing X" but also "every single thing an account with X in their name" said, meaning any search doesn't work unless you block all those accounts.

And then sometimes it includes porn spammers, who are the main users of hashtags.

Re:Threads, an Instagram App by sgc on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @11:04AM (#36587624)
I use the hashtags to discover new accounts to then follow / add to lists. It is not the same stage of research.
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by brigandish on Monday July 03, 2023 @11:33PM (#36581871)
Because apps ignore them in favour of their algorithmic method of taxonomy instead. If hashtags were actually useful they'd doubtless take off again.
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by gingerrr on Monday July 03, 2023 @10:17PM (#36581393)
They already have exactly this, it's called "Communities" and not very heavily used.

edit: great idea though it functions pretty much exactly as you described, get into product if you're not yet!

Re:Threads, an Instagram App by interestica on Monday July 03, 2023 @11:44PM (#36581958)
I didn't know. I suppose this speaks to Instagram/Meta’s differing strategy: build a product as a separate app and then fold its successful features into its main offering. (Eg., Direct, Layout, Boomerang, Hyperlapse).
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by gremlinsinc on Monday July 03, 2023 @10:34PM (#36581515)
they could have, if they didn't close down their API, nobody wants to migrate from one API-less company to another.
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by russ on Monday July 03, 2023 @10:44PM (#36581577)
Lol, I built this exact thing as a 120% project at Twitter in 2011.

It was called “Flocks”. It even had transient/temporal flocks based on geo check-in and sound-fingerprint flocks for movies, tv shows, and events. We implemented the Shazam audio signature algo from a research paper we found.

The thesis was: it’s more natural for people to have conversations when there’s a shared context.

It became a widely known project within the company back then, but ultimately, like most things at Twitter, never shipped.

Re:Threads, an Instagram App by interestica on Monday July 03, 2023 @11:33PM (#36581873)
Lol that’s amazing. They could have even now done tongue-in-cheek marketing and straight up call it a “migration”.

Also, “nest-ed comments” on different “branches”.

You could work backwards and find the bird-related concept and then build the correspond technology?

What would “feathers” be?

Re:Threads, an Instagram App by russ on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @01:16AM (#36582501)
Hah! Working backwards would yield some hits for sure.

“Feather” (a play off a quill) was my prototype (I built a lot of prototypes there in my “spare” time :)) for a richer, write/tweet only app. You could author long-form content, quickly jump into the camera for recording video or taking a picture (goal: frictionless citizen journalism), and other stuff. I wanted to build a delightful tweeting experience and at the time, it felt like the mobile implementation was just yanked wholesale from Web.

Re:Threads, an Instagram App by prox on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @03:22AM (#36583342)
Aren’t you in a unique position to make a start-up out of this?
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by DANmode on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @01:14PM (#36589612)
Based on their legal situation, they may (unfortunately) feel in a unique situation to NOT make a startup out of this.
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by thakoppno on Monday July 03, 2023 @11:35PM (#36581895)
Twitter and a a time shifted and syncd media experience is still such a good idea.
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by russ on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @01:23AM (#36582530)
I agree — I’d love that.
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by pschuegr on Monday July 03, 2023 @11:24PM (#36581812)
That sounds really cool, you were basically (my translation) auto-creating sub-reddits based on the media people were consuming at the time?

Sweet project.

Re:Threads, an Instagram App by russ on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @01:22AM (#36582527)
Yeah! Wanted a really fast/frictionless way for people to jump into a context based on signals in their environment. This was also around the time of Color (the photo app which raised 40m or something off just a pitch deck) — “ambient computing” was becoming part of the zeitgeist.

Thanks for the kind words! <3

Re:Threads, an Instagram App by pjc50 on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @05:50AM (#36584382)
This is the sort of comment that keeps me coming back to HN - incredible. You were absolutely right that livetweeting TV is one of the great uses of Twitter, and it's a real shame this never got a wider rollout.

During the pandemic we started a sort of "virtual mst3k": cue up a film, everyone presses play at a particular time, and tweet along with jokes and the occasional screenshot. We're now up to film #300 and still haven't run out of "bad" movies. An endless source of cinematic surprises.

("bad" is very loosely defined, but if it's a critical success or made a lot of money, that's probably not it. We've seen a lot of Roger Corman, Shawscope, Hammer, Amicus, Cannon Films, Dino de Laurentiis etc)

> ultimately, like most things at Twitter, never shipped.

This is why the "Twitter will die instantly when 80% of the engineers are sacked" takes were wrong, isn't it? 80% of the engineers were working on products that would never see the light of day, instead.

Re:Threads, an Instagram App by rlt on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @02:41AM (#36583028)
Why would the people leaving Reddit because they killed the API go to Twitter which killed their own API last year?
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by dbbk on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @08:37AM (#36585844)
This did exist at some point, it was called Communities: https://twitter.com/hiCommunities