It's so dumb.

Someone please explain how a social network is supposed to succeed when it's invite-only? Hype alone won't carry it.

IMO, being invite-only is THE reason Google+ failed. There were so many memes about people getting excited for an invite, getting on, and then finding only a couple people they knew were on it, if any at all.

For a social network to work, it needs to be a network. Limiting on-boarding eliminates the network, and so people lose interest fast.

> Someone please explain how a social network is supposed to succeed when it's invite-only? Hype alone won't carry it.

It may be that the industry has evolved to a degree that this is no longer viable (I also don’t know if I believe this…), but invite-only or otherwise limited launches formed the backbone of the current web.

Facebook was only available if you had a school address. Gmail was only available via invite. Obviously a service can’t stay in a limited state forever and the hype will run out, but it’s not exactly a new approach to limiting access early in the life of a service.

Google+ failed because Google killed it. I never experienced what you describe, but admittedly got an invite very early, and interacted with people who had also gotten the same thing.

Limiting onboarding does not eliminate the network. It just limits it. Again, to your point, this can’t last forever, but is not by itself the issue as long as they continue to scale up access. There are plenty of other issues that will make or break a network.

Gmail interoperated with other email providers, so invites worked. Facebook limited signups based on email domain names, not invite codes, so everyone in those email domains could sign up at the same time. Google+, like Bluesky, started with invite codes without a way for communities to join organically.

The theory behind invite only is that it increases the density of the network. You invite people with similar interests as this the network can nucleate around some niche, rather than being 10,000 people with nothing in common. It's one of the standard plays for overcoming cold-start problems.

I think it's supposed to create a feeling of scarcity or exclusivity and make people perceive the network as more valuable.

No, it's because their servers would fall over if it was public registration, and they wouldn't be able to keep up with moderation

Scaling is hard. Invite codes help with that. They’re not terribly hard to find, I’ve several that I’ll happily share with anyone I know from elsewhere.

Because they didn't have capacity a year ago. Gmail was invite-only as well you know.

I don't know, Google+ seemed fine. It wasn't eating the world, and wasn't clear how it was positioned in their branding, but fine.

Bsky is the same; there's unexplainable pressure I feel in there to keep it to an in-group of nicest of people, but fine. It's not derailing into a Mastodon.

What does "too late" mean? I don't like Bluesky; it feels cliquish and insubstantial to me, and I do most of my Twitter-type writing on Mastodon now. But what am I losing by not writing on Twitter? I've been saying this for several months now, but the vibe I get from the current "fragmented" social media situation is of a reversion back to something like the heyday of Google Reader and the "blogosphere". Like: I need multiple browser tabs to keep track of everything?That's fine? It's better than when everything was crammed into a single site, with a single set of affordances nobody really liked.

I agree that Twitter was a weird amalgamation of different people who wanted to use the site for different things… but for me that’s one of the things that made it compelling. I get to read a person’s musing on JavaScript frameworks and also see pictures of their dog and see them react in real time to a World Cup game.

IMO Twitter was a very compelling place to be during a breaking news event (and I don’t just mean political news, could be cultural, sports etc) and none of the alternatives have replicated that yet. Mastodon is maybe not even technically capable of it (because federation introduces a delay in message delivery).

I do enjoy niche discussions on Mastodon but once you’ve removed time as an influential factor for importance the default chronological view doesn’t feel anywhere near as to me.

Can you tell me more about how you see your practice of posting as writing? I don't hear many people talk sbout it like that. Also, what's your goal with it?

Threads has been that for me, but of course YMMV depending on the topics you like to follow. If you haven't tried tools like ThreadLink, Threads Sync, etc. lately, you might be surprised.

I think the point was controlled growth and community quality, not to capture Twitter's eternal September. Let them go to Threads.

Part of me thinks that's the point, I don't believe Jack set out to make something that could be a meaningful threat to twitter. It seems like it's meant to be just big enough to suck the oxygen out of the room for other twitter alternatives. (Obviously that failed, now that threads is topping download charts and twitter is sitting in the 40s.)

The man has enough access to capital and can easily hire folks with the know-how to make a service that can scale. That fact that this hasn't happened says something.

I think bluesky has mindshare and is still ready to be the eventual twitter heir

Bluesky seems to be the "backup" for a lot of Twitter users. When Twitter had their outage a day or two ago the network activity spiked to some of the highest levels seen since like October.

Does anyone actually use threads? Everyone seemed to go check it out, but I don't know anyone actively using it.

Threads has ~100 million monthly active users according to Zuck, while Musk claims ~550 million.

So if you believe that it's fair to say that "people actually use Mastodon" (which has 1.5 million MAUs), then yes — people actually use Threads.

It has like, 30x more users than Mastodon lol

For now, it's the most viable alternative for Twitter - for now.

But this is in part because Mastodon UX is very complicated for beginners, and BlueSky is slow as hell to make improvements. It still doesn't support sending videos...

I'm really curious as to what will happen when Threads turns on ActivityPub federation for everyone. At that point, Threads and Mastodon will be the same network, aside from servers that have preemptively blocked Threads.

Whenever I revisit Threads, it feels like I'm in the tourist trap of social networks. Celebrities and brands are pushed into my feed, posting vacuous engagement traps.

I felt like I had discoverability issues with Mastodon, and the culture I kept running into there was abrasive. It's all around much better now than it was years ago, and I do seem to get more engagement from strangers than on any of the other networks, but I struggled to stay interested.

Bluesky reminded me of the kind of slower organic growth that you'd typically find in earlier internet communities. The absence of videos and GIFs is, for me, an enormous positive point that I know will eventually give way to popular demand. I like that it's more text-and-images focused, and it seems to be in my sweet spot in terms of... most of what I see feel like thoughtful posts and replies, and not people nakedly building their personal brand.

None of them are going to have the same social cachet as Twitter. It's pretty incredible to see someone spend billions of dollars to completely squander an ecosystem an internationally recognizable brand like that. A fairly unique resource, obliterated by a man-baby with absolutely no concept of the value of the people on the platform he bought.

Some people I know use it. I use it from times to times but the crypto community hasn’t really been active there. My guess is that if you have a big instagram following then Threads make a lot of sense.

Threads has picked up quite a bit of steam in a lot of communities recently. Not sure how widespread it is but it seems to be doing fairly well.

There are well over 100m MAU so a lot of people are using it.

And it has reached the #1 position in most of the App Stores around the world.

I heard before that Threads is the number one in app stores. If I look right now (23.12) in the Apple App Store then I can’t find it at all in the top 200 (unless I missed something). I see X on 165 and Telegram for example, but no Threads.

Is it really no. 1 or nearby on Android ?

I don't see it in the top 200 on Android.

Threads actually is pretty nice o.o

Judging by the traffic traces (number of comments on popular posts), I’d have to agree.

I've seen many products loose steam due to invite only. It's a failure to recognize heavy public interest and strike while the iron is hot.