From Digital Age to Nano Age. WorldWide.

Tag: Twitter

Atoms Lanka Solutions > Twitter
Robotic Automations

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone joins board of Mastodon's new U.S. non-profit | TechCrunch

April 29, 2024 8:54 PM0


Biz Stone, a Twitter co-founder, is among those who have joined the board of directors of Mastodon’s new U.S. non-profit, Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko announced over the weekend. Mastodon’s service, an open source, decentralized social network and rival to Elon Musk’s X, has gained increased attention following the Twitter acquisition as users sought alternatives to X’s would-be “everything app” that felt more like the old Twitter of days past.

Mastodon only somewhat fits that bill. Though the service resembles Twitter in many ways, it’s underpinned by different infrastructure. As part of the “fediverse” — or the open social web made up of interconnected servers communicating over the ActivityPub protocol — Mastodon benefits users who no longer want to be locked into a centralized social network that can be bought and sold to new billionaire owners, like Musk.

Though Mastodon was already established as a non-profit in Germany in 2021, the creation of a 501(c)(3) non-profit in the U.S. will allow the company to receive tax-deductible donations and other financial support. The change also comes as Mastodon has inexplicitly lost its non-profit status in Germany.

“…we have received a notice from the same tax office that our non-profit status has been withdrawn,” wrote Rochko on the Mastodon blog. “This came with no advance warning or explanation. Earlier this year we went through a successful tax audit, which in fact resulted in some favourable adjustments as we’ve been paying too much tax. Our tax advisor immediately submitted an appeal to the decision, but so far, we have no new information,” he said.

Mastodon’s day-to-day operations were unaffected by this change, as most of its income comes from the crowdfunding platform Patreon. It also received donations from Jeff Atwood and Mozilla at $100K apiece, which allowed the company to hire a third full-time developer this year.

However, being established as a non-profit enables Mastodon to communicate how it differs from other social media businesses. While becoming a non-profit in the U.S. will help Mastodon regain its status, it wants to remain based out of the EU.

In addition to Biz Stone, other board members include Esra’a Al Shafei, a human rights advocate and founder of Majal.org; Karien Bezuidenhout, an advocate for openness and experienced board member across sustainable social enterprise; Amir Ghavi, a partner at law firm Fried Frank, where he’s the co-head of the Technology Transactions Practice; and Felix Hlatky, the Chief Financial Officer of Mastodon since 2020, who originally incorporated the project as a non-profit LLC in Germany and helped it raise additional funds.


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Tesla has spent $200K advertising on Elon Musk's X so far | TechCrunch

April 26, 2024 4:02 AM0


Tesla has spent around $200,000 on advertising through February on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, after the CEO caved to shareholder pressure last year and said his company would “try a little advertising.”

Since then, Tesla ads have showed up in places like Google search results and on YouTube. But it was also increasingly apparent that Elon’s car company was paying Elon’s social media company to advertise, too. We now know how much Tesla paid X thanks to details released Wednesday in its annual proxy statement, which includes a section on “related person transactions” the company has made. (Tesla has not disclosed how much it has spent on advertising overall.)

Tesla also paid X around $50,000 in 2023 and $30,000 through February 2024 for “commercial, consulting and support agreements.” Likewise, X paid Tesla $1 million in 2023 and around $20,000 through February 2024 for the same unspecified work. Tesla doesn’t say exactly what those agreements entail, but the companies have reportedly shared or loaned employees following Musk’s acquisition of X and his increased focus on building AI products at each business.

Essentially, all of Musk’s companies have engaged in transactions like these over the years, and 2023 was no different. The proxy filing shows that SpaceX paid Tesla $2.1 million in 2023 and approximately $800,000 through February 2024 for “certain commercial, licensing and support agreements with Tesla.” Tesla, meanwhile, paid SpaceX $700,000 in 2023 and $100,000 through February 2024 for the use of a corporate jet owned by Musk’s space company. Tesla paid Musk’s tunneling effort, The Boring Company, $200,000 in 2023 and $1 million through February 2024.

Curiously, Tesla says that in December 2023, it hired a security company owned by Elon Musk to provide security services for him, “including in connection with his duties to and work for Tesla.” The company says that already cost $2.4 million in 2023 and around $500,000 through February 2024. It adds that this is only “a portion of the total cost of security services concerning Elon Musk.”

Finally, Tesla also says it was paid $11.5 million in 2023 and around $6 million through February 2024 for scrap materials by EV battery recycling company Redwood Materials, which is run by Tesla board member (and former CTO) JB Straubel.

Texas reincorporation

All of this financial back-and-forth comes as Musk is still in the middle of trying to appeal a recent decision by the Delaware Chancery Court that struck down his massive 2018 stock compensation plan. The judge made that decision in part because she believed Tesla “inaccurately described key directors [of Tesla’s board] as independent and misleadingly omitted key details about the process” of putting the package together.

Musk was furious with the decision and posted on X shortly after that Tesla would “move immediately to hold a shareholder vote to transfer state of incorporation to Texas,” where Tesla has already relocated its physical headquarters.

The proxy reveals that Tesla’s board started a process shortly after to evaluate the idea — they also say they had previously considered moving the company’s state of incorporation, but never decided to — because “redomestication is a Board decision, not a decision for a chief executive officer.” A special committee was formed, led by board member Kathleen Wilson-Thompson. She hired two lawyers from Sidley Austin to represent the committee and engaged an expert lawyer from Delaware, a Chicago law professor, and Houlihan Lokey as financial adviser to help with the process. They also set out to determine what to do about re-voting on Musk’s struck compensation package.

Over eight weeks, Wilson-Thompson’s committee met 16 times for more than 26 hours, and Tesla says she personally spent “more than 200 hours” working on the matter. The Sidley lawyers spent “more than 600 hours each” on the matter and were supported by “more than 40 other Sidley lawyers.” Through this process, seven board directors and five members of Tesla’s management were interviewed.

Tesla goes into detail about how multiple states were considered, before narrowing down to Texas since companies tend to either be incorporated in Delaware or their home state. And the decision was ultimately made to put the move and the “re-ratification” of Musk’s stock plan up to a shareholder vote at the company’s annual meeting, which will now take place on June 13. While it’s hard to imagine either of those votes failing, they are likely to stir up even more legal debate after that vote takes place. Musk and his brother Kimbal, who is a board member, are recused from voting on the move “because of [Musk’s] prior posts on X about reincorporation.”

“The Committee and its counsel are aware of the media narrative regarding Musk, Tesla, and its Board,” the committee writes in the proxy. “And the Committee’s work was conducted against a backdrop of unrelenting public interest in whether Tesla would reincorporate and in Musk’s compensation. Far from being influenced by these factors, this outside narrative and attention intensified the commitment of the Committee and its counsel to conduct a staunchly independent process.”

This story originally misstated who was getting paid in the arrangement between Redwood Materials and Tesla. Redwood Materials has paid the money to Tesla.


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Mark Zuckerberg says Threads has 150 million monthly active users | TechCrunch

April 25, 2024 9:41 AM0


Meta’s Twitter/X rival Threads is growing at a stable pace. The social network now has more than 150 million monthly active users — up from 130 million in February — Mark Zuckerberg mentioned during the company’s Q1 2024 earnings call.

Since the last quarterly earnings call, Threads has notably taken steps towards integrating with ActivityPub, the decentralized protocol that powers networks like Mastodon. In March, the company allowed U.S.-based users over 18 to connect their accounts to the Fediverse so their posts would show up on other servers.

The company also plans to release its API to a wide set of developers by June, allowing them to build experiences around the social network. However, it is still not clear if Threads will allow developers to make full-fledged third-party clients.

Last week, Meta launched its AI chatbot across Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Threads was a notable exclusion from this list, possibly because of the lack of native DM functionality.

On Wednesday, Threads also released a test feature to let users auto-archive their posts after a period of defined time. They can also archive or unarchive individual posts and make them public.

Threads is roughly nine months old, and Meta has steadily built out the audience. However, it is strictly not an X alternative, as Instagram Head Adam Mosseri said in October that Threads won’t “amplify news on the platform.” But Meta’s social network is still gaining steam. Earlier this week, Business Insider reported that according to app analytics firm Apptopia, Threads now has more daily active users in the U.S. than X.


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

X is launching a TV app for videos 'soon' | TechCrunch

April 23, 2024 9:48 PM0


X, the company formerly known as Twitter, is launching a dedicated TV app for videos uploaded to the social network soon. X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced on Tuesday that the new app will bring “real-time, engaging content to your smart TVs.” The app’s interface looks quite similar to YouTube’s, as seen in a teaser video shared by Yaccarino.

The app will feature a trending video algorithm that is designed to help users stay updated with tailored popular content, along with AI-powered topics that will organize videos by subject. The app will also support cross-device viewing, which means you can start watching a video on your phone and then continue watching it on your TV.

Yaccarino says the app will feature enhanced video search and be available on “most smart TVs.” Although there isn’t an official launch date for the app, the executive says it will be available “soon.”

The upcoming app launch is part of Yaccarino’s efforts to turn the social media site into a free-speech “video first” platform. The social network currently features an original show hosted by former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and another by former Fox Sports host Jim Rome. Last month, Musk canceled a talk show deal with former CNN anchor Don Lemon after he was interviewed for the first episode of the show.

The announcement comes a week after Truth Social, the social media platform owned by Donald Trump’s media company, also unveiled its plans to launch a live TV streaming platform. The platform will focus on “news networks” and “religious channels,” along with “ content that has been canceled” or “is being suppressed on other platforms and services,” the company had said.

Trump’s Truth Social plans to launch a live TV streaming platform




Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Lyrak to take on X by combining the best of Twitter with fediverse integration | TechCrunch

April 21, 2024 2:43 AM0


Threads. Mastodon. Bluesky. Substack Notes. Post. Nostr. Spoutible. There’s no shortage of X competitors in the months following the acquisition of the text-based social network formerly known as Twitter by Elon Musk. Now you can add one more startup to that lineup: Lyrak, a new X rival that aims to differentiate itself by focusing on real-time news and monetization options for creators, as on X, but with fediverse integrations, similar to Instagram’s Threads.

The fediverse refers to the open source social network of interconnected servers powered by the social networking protocol ActivityPub. Mastodon is the most well-known among the federated social apps, but even Meta has sensed a shift in the direction of the web and built its latest social network, Threads, with an eye toward ActivityPub integrations.

With Lyrak, the plan is to take the best of what Twitter has to offer and combine it with ActiviyPub integration, allowing users to interact with a wider audience on other federated social networks, like Mastodon and others.

That integration isn’t yet live, but the team says it’ll begin the work in a few months. Once live, Lyrak users will be able to see posts from Mastodon users and vice versa.

Image Credits: Lyrak

Founded by London-based web designer and marketer Rishi Siva, Lyrak is named for a lead character in the TV show “His Dark Materials,” Lyra. Siva says Lyra discovers new worlds, and because Lyrak is also striving to build something better, it seemed like a good source of inspiration.

The founder came up with the idea after spending time helping small businesses set up websites so they could make money on the web and attract customers. At one point, Siva also created a Thumbtack-like app, but the COVID-19 pandemic impacted its ability to grow as many local tradespeople were unable to work at the time.

Still, he expresses a desire to help users to better monetize their content and skills online.

“Our lower fees and sharing 50% ad revenue with creators further support this goal,” Siva notes.

By comparison, X doesn’t publicly share its percentage, which can vary based on the type of post, demographics, geography and other factors. Plus, revenue is only earned for ads shown to Verified users (paid subscribers).

Siva is also unhappy with the direction X is going and how it affects creators.

“After Musk took over Twitter, I saw a significant change in the way the platform behaved and the types of accounts it promoted. It’s disappointing to see that all the tech leaders I admire ignored this and still use Twitter [X],” he noted, pointing to the issues around far-right groups and antisemitic content on X’s platform.

However, he admits that Twitter/X still remains the best place for real-time news, which is why it remains sticky with users, despite the changes. Threads, meanwhile, isn’t prioritizing real-time news outside of sports; Siva dubs it “basically a text version of Instagram.”

He thinks Mastodon and Bluesky will ultimately be too complicated for regular users, but Lyrak could benefit from their networks through fediverse integrations. (Technically, Bluesky is not federated with Mastodon because it uses a different protocol, but work is being done to build bridges between the two.)

Image Credits: Lyrak

Lyrak says it will focus initially on getting journalists to join the network, to help it with becoming a real-time social app. To attract them, Lyrak will allow Verified journalists to share content to users’ home feeds based on their interests and offer tools to send them notifications to people who regularly click their links. (The latter is similar to Artifact — RIP — which would alert users to new articles from reporters and writers they followed.)

The startup will also try to attract people who sell digital products, with specific tools launching for this crowd later in May. Creators will be able to offer subscriptions to their followers as well as collect tips.

Another coming feature will involve AI tools, like an answer engine and user-generated AI characters, also planned for May.

The company plans to generate revenue through ads, like X, but also by taking a 10% cut from paid posts, subscriptions, tips, digital products and other AI features, in time.

To route around app store fees, Lyrak’s website will allow users to deposit funds to the app, which they can use to pay creators. (Funds added through in-app purchases will require paying Apple its 30% fee, however.)

Another idea, borrowed from sites like Reddit, is a reputation score that will reflect the value a user brings to the community through their comments, reposts, likes and inviting others to the platform. This will be combined with AI moderation efforts and human moderators to keep the app safe, the team promises.

Image Credits: Lyrak

“After our initial launch and a couple of weeks of bug fixes, we plan to regularly release new features,” Siva said. “The advantage of being a startup building a social app is that we have a fresh perspective on things. We’re not stuck in the old ways of thinking, which allows us to innovate and create features that truly benefit our users.”

Lyrak is being built by a team of five, most of whom are based in London. (The fifth person is soon moving to London, too.) The startup is currently bootstrapped and available for download on iOS.




Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Post News, the a16z-funded Twitter alternative, is shutting down | TechCrunch

April 20, 2024 12:57 AM0


Post News, a microblogging site that emerged in the days after Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition, is shutting down just a year and a half after launching in beta.

Founder Noam Bardin, previously CEO of Waze, broke the news in a post on Friday.

“At the end of the day, our service is not growing fast enough to become a real business or a significant platform,” Bardin said. “A consumer business, at its core, needs to show rapid consumer adoption and we have not managed to find the right product combination to make it happen.”

Post was backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Scott Galloway, an NYU professor and tech commentator, but the platform never disclosed how much it raised. Silicon Valley journalist Kara Swisher was an adviser to the company.

Post News, a Twitter alternative, gets funding from a16z

Post’s strategy was to harness Twitter’s reputation as a virtual watercooler for journalists, then build on that further by creating a new way for publishers and writers to monetize. Instead of subscribing to various different publications, Post users could purchase individual articles from certain partner outlets.

Despite Post’s closure, Bardin said he thinks that the company proved something about the different ways in which digital news outlets can monetize. He wrote that Post “validated many theories around Micropayments and consumers’ willingness to purchase individual articles.” The platform also allowed users to tip writers for their work.

Bardin is right that the media landscape is changing. There are more independent and worker-owned publications than ever, hosted on tech platforms like Substack, Beehiiv and Ghost. But perhaps it was too soon to try to capture this nascent movement in a social platform.

Around the same time that Post sprung up, a number of other Twitter alternatives threw their hat into the ring to capture the population of users who would be dissatisfied with Musk’s ownership decisions. Post managed to hang in there for more than a year after launch, but it’s not the only new microblogging site that’s folded. Pebble, also known as T2, shut down in October.

As we knew all along, social media is a tough business — and even if users flock to your site for a fleeting moment, that doesn’t mean they’ll stick around.

AirChat, the buzzy new social app, could be great — or, it could succumb to the same fate as Clubhouse


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

AirChat, the buzzy new social app, could be great – or, it could succumb to the same fate as Clubhouse | TechCrunch

April 18, 2024 3:05 AM0


Over the weekend, another social media platform exploded into the fray: AirChat. The app is like a combination of Twitter and Clubhouse. Instead of typing a post, you speak it. The app quickly transcribes what you say, and as your followers scroll through their feed, they’ll hear your voice alongside the transcription.

Built by AngelList founder Naval Ravikant and former Tinder exec Brian Norgard, Airchat takes a refreshingly intimate approach to social media. There are people I’ve known online for years, and only after following each other on AirChat did I realize I’d never heard their actual voices. The platform makes it feel like we’re actually having conversations with one another, but since AirChat is asynchronous, it doesn’t feel as daunting as joining a room on Clubhouse and having live conversations with strangers.

Posting with your voice may sound scary, but it’s not as intimidating as it seems — you can re-record your post if you misspeak. But if you’re someone who loves sending your friends three-minute voice memos instead of typing (or if you have a podcast), AirChat feels intuitive.

AirChat wouldn’t be worth using if the transcriptions were sub-par, but it’s the best speech-to-text product I’ve ever used. It almost always hits the mark in English… it even transcribes Pokémon names correctly (yes, I tested this extensively). It also seems to be doing well in other languages – I found it functional in Spanish, and TechCrunch reporter Ivan Mehta said that the app did a decent job transcribing Hindi. Sometimes, the app will translate speech directly to English, and while the translations were generally correct in our testing, it’s not clear why or when the app translates instead of transcribing.

So, is AirChat here to stay? That depends on what kind of people can find community on the platform. For now, the feed feels like a San Francisco coffee shop – most of the people on the app have some connection to the tech industry, which could be because tech enthusiasts are often the first to jump on new apps. This wasn’t the case for Threads when it launched (it’s just an extension of Instagram), or even Bluesky, which developed an early culture of absurd memes and irreverence. Right now, the app has paused invites, so this won’t improve in the near future.

The app’s current culture could also be a reflection of its founders, who are influential in Silicon Valley and venture capitalist circles. But it’s telling that when AirChat introduced a channels feature, two of the first to spring up were “Crypto” and “e/acc,” which stands for effective acceleration, an aggressively pro-tech movement.

This doesn’t have to be an automatic red flag – I (somewhat reluctantly) use Twitter/X every day, and the tech industry also feels especially loud there. But at least on X, my feed also contains posts about my favorite baseball team, the music I like, or the ongoing debate over adding more bike lanes in my neighborhood. So far on AirChat, I haven’t seen many conversations that aren’t about tech in some way.

What I do consider a red flag is AirChat’s naive approach to content moderation.

“We’re going to try and put as many of the moderation tools in the hands of the users as possible. We want to be as hands-off as possible. That said, sometimes you just have no choice,” said Ravikant on AirChat.

The phrasing of “hands-off” is reminiscent of Substack, a platform that lost popular publications like Platformer and Garbage Day after it refused to remove pro-Nazi content proactively.

AirChat did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

Ravikant argues that AirChat should function like a dinner party – you won’t kick someone out of your house for partaking in a civil debate. But if they start violently screaming at you, it would be wise to intervene.

“We don’t want to moderate for content, but we will moderate for tone,” Ravikant said.

In real life social situations, it’s very normal behavior to disagree with someone and explain why you think differently. That’s a pretty manageable situation to handle at your own dinner table. But AirChat isn’t a normal social situation, since you’re in conversation with thousands of other people; without more robust content moderation, this approach is like hosting a big music festival, but with only one person working security. One might hope that everyone will enjoy the music and behave themselves without supervision, but it’s not realistic. Just look at Woodstock ‘99.

This is another way in which AirChat parallels Clubhouse. Clubhouse’s approach to content moderation was even more permissive, since there was no way to block people for months after launch – AirChat already has block and mute features, thankfully. Clubhouse repeatedly played host to antisemitic and misogynistic conversations without consequence.

With this minimalist approach to content moderation, it’s not hard to see how AirChat could get into hot water. What happens if someone shares copyrighted audio on the platform? What about when someone doxxes another user, or if someone uploads CSAM? Without an actual plan to navigate these situations, what will happen to AirChat?

I hope that people can behave themselves, since I think the concept behind AirChat is brilliant, but we can’t be so naïve. I would like to know that if neo-Nazis tried to politely explain to me why Hitler was right, the platform would be able to protect me.

Naval Ravikant’s Airchat is a social app built around talk, not text


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

X adds support for passkeys globally on iOS | TechCrunch

April 18, 2024 12:06 AM0


X, formerly Twitter, is rolling out support for passkeys, a new and more secure login method compared with traditional passwords, to all iOS users globally. The option debuted in January, but only for iOS users in the U.S.

In an update to the X @Safety account on Monday, the company shared that passkeys are now available as a login option for global iOS users. Similar technology has already been added to other popular apps and services, including PayPal, TikTok, WhatsApp, GitHub and others. Google last fall made passkeys the default sign-in option for all users. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and other companies also support the option.

Passkey technology was initiated by Google, Apple, Microsoft and the FIDO Alliance, alongside the World Wide Web Consortium. The idea is to make passwordless logins available across different devices, operating systems and web browsers. Unlike traditional logins, which require a username and password combination, passkeys use biometric authentication like Face ID or Touch ID, a PIN or a physical security authentication key to validate logins. The process combines the benefits of two-factor authentication (2FA) into a single step, making logins more seamless while maintaining increased security.

For X, the addition could help users protect their accounts against hacks from bad actors. The social network has seen a number of high-profile hacks over the years, including one in January where the U.S. Securities and Exchange’s X account shared an unauthorized post regarding Bitcoin ETF approval. Donald Trump Jr.’s X account was also hacked to post a fake message saying that Donald Trump had passed away. There was also a 2020 crypto scam that saw many larger accounts compromised, including Apple’s, President Biden’s and X owner Elon Musk’s account, among others.

The addition could also help X users who previously relied on SMS 2FA to re-secure their accounts, as X announced last year that option would be removed for non-paying users. X had argued that the cost-cutting measure could be abused by bad actors, such as in the case of SIM swaps. But the reality is that it made X less secure.

X offers users instructions on how to get started with passkeys on iOS. There’s no word yet on when Android users will have the option.




Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Substack’s Notes feature is getting more Twitter-like capabilities | TechCrunch

April 16, 2024 8:37 PM0


Substack is adding new capabilities to its Twitter-like Notes feature that bring it more in-line with the social network now known as X. The company announced on Tuesday that users can now post videos directly to Notes in the Substack app and on the web. Users can now also embed Notes on external webpages.

The launch of the new features come a year after Substack introduced Notes in April 2023, during a time when companies were aiming to attract users who were fleeing Twitter after Elon Musk took the reigns of the social network in late 2022. Notes let users share posts, quotes, comments, images, links and ideas in a Tweet-like format, The short-form content is displayed in a dedicated Twitter-like feed.

Starting today, users can post videos directly to Notes by recording a video or selecting one from their phone’s camera roll or their desktop. The company says more writers and creators are using its video tools and starting new shows on the platform, so it wants to make it possible for them to share their work on Notes, too. Given that apps like X and Meta’s Threads allow users to post videos, it makes sense for Notes to offer the capability as well.

As for embedding Notes on external pages, Substack says the new capability will allow writers’ content to travel widely across the web beyond Substack. In an example given by Substack, a writer’s Note could be embedded into a news article, which happens with X posts quite often. Users can find a Note’s embed code by clicking on the three-dot menu in the top right corner and selecting the “embed note” option.

Substack announced on Tuesday that Notes has generated more than 3,000 paid subscriptions and 230,000 free subscriptions for writers and creators on Substack in the past 30 days. In its blog post, Substack explains that Notes is especially valuable for users who don’t have large pre-existing audiences.

The company saw an opportunity to capitalize on the chaos at Twitter as soon as it began. In October 2022, Substack took a direct shot at Twitter and warned in a post  that: “Twitter is changing, and it’s tough to predict what might be next.” The post had encouraged creators of all sorts to port their Twitter follower base to Substack. Substack then took its ambitions further with the launch of a Chat feature, and then later, Notes.

As Substack continues to build out its Twitter-like product, X is spiraling further into disarray, as the company announced on Monday that it plans to charge new users a small fee before they are allowed to post on the social network, in an effort to curb the platform’s bot problem.

Substack now allows podcasters to sync and distribute their episodes to Spotify


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Meta explains why the NYC/NJ earthquake didn't trend earlier in the day | TechCrunch

April 16, 2024 4:25 AM0


Despite its similarities, Instagram Threads is no X. At least, not yet. The text-focused social network — and Meta’s answer to Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter — missed a moment to shine on Friday when users once again turned to X to discuss the New York/New Jersey area earthquake. The traffic surge drove #earthquake to the top of X’s Trends section, followed by other areas of impact, like “East Coast,” “Long Island,” “Philly,” “Manhattan” and “Brooklyn.” Meanwhile, earthquake-related terms didn’t register on Threads’ trends section until closer to 2 p.m. ET, even though the earthquake had hit a little before 10:30 on Friday morning.

That’s not to say people weren’t discussing the earthquake on Threads — many were. In addition to conversations taking place around the earthquake, people were even tagging their discussions as EarthquakeThreads or NYC Threads, among other things, to help surface their posts to the wider Threads Community.

 

Post by @timothyjchambers
View on Threads

 

Another reason the term likely wasn’t trending: Unlike Twitter/X, Threads doesn’t use hashtags.

While this design choice makes the user interface cleaner, it also may make it less obvious how to tag trending terms. It seems obvious that discussions of the earthquake should be tagged #earthquake (or “earthquake” without the hashtag, as on Threads), but people on the Meta-owned platform have started using the tagging convention of “[term] Threads“ — like “Tech Threads” for people in tech talking about tech, for example.

This could complicate things when a big trend comes along because some will tag it “earthquake” and others will tag it “Earthquake Threads” while others still may target their local community, like “NYC Threads,” which leads to none of the terms gaining the velocity and momentum needed to break into the top trends on Threads, despite all of them referencing the same event.

Around 1 p.m. on Friday, TechCrunch reached out to Instagram to ask why the earthquake didn’t make it into Threads’ top trends.

We were told that Threads’ five top trends are based on various signals, including how many people are talking about a given topic, and how many people have engaged with posts on that same topic. Because the earthquake was a regional event, and trends are based on national conversations, it may have simply taken more time for enough people to join the conversation, Instagram said.

 

Post by @backlon
View on Threads

 

Shortly after checking in with Threads, the now many-hours-old earthquake became the No. 1 trend on the platform.

Unfortunately for Threads, being unable to keep up with trends in real time could hamper its ability to fully compete with X. Combined with Meta’s plan to distance itself from discussions of a political nature — even going so far as not to “recommend” political content across Instagram and Threads’ platforms — Threads may never fully be able to supersede X, even if it builds many of the other same bells and whistles, like reposts, search, bookmarks and linkable tags.

This stands in sharp contradiction to how Twitter’s founders perceived the power of their new platform to deliver real-time information — and a reason why Twitter became the home to breaking news, active topical discussions and a hub for journalists.

Not long after TechCrunch covered Twitter (then called Twttr) for the first time, the San Francisco earthquake rocked the service, allowing both the founders and users alike to grasp Twttr’s potential. Later that fall, the app had grown to thousands of users.

Said former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey in a 2016 Harvard Business School newsroom interview, “I was in the office on a Saturday, and my phone buzzed, and it was a tweet, and it said simply, ‘Earthquake.’ Immediately after that I actually felt the tremors in San Francisco. The phone kept buzzing, and there was, ‘earthquake, earthquake, earthquake.’”

“What was amazing about that is I was experiencing something in the world, and immediately I felt comforted because it was obvious that other people were experiencing the same thing,” Dorsey said. “I thought, ‘Wow, the world is so small. You can actually — just by having that shared sensation that shared experience, you all feel like you’re all in this together.’”

Threads may have 130 million monthly active users, making it the largest player in the “fediverse,” the social network of interconnected servers and services, including Mastodon, Misskey, Pixelfed, PeerTube and others. But despite usage declines, X has remained “stickier” than some would have believed, especially given the wide crop of competitors that have emerged to challenge Musk’s X. In fact, according to one report by Sensor Tower, X’s usage by power users remained largely unchanged as of last fall.

Already there are signs that Threads is failing to deliver a true X-like experience. As Max Read described it in a March newsletter, “Threads is the gas-leak social network,” referring to the randomness of the posts that filled users’ For You feeds.

“Everyone on the platform, including you, seems to be suffering some kind of minor brain damage,” Read wrote. “Who are these people? What are they talking about? Are they responding to something that I missed? Why am I reading this? How did it get into my feed? How am I supposed to react?”

If Threads can’t capitalize on real-time information, like an earthquake or a current political discussion; if its feed bubbles up very old posts; and if its trends remain delayed by hours, Threads’ ability to be a viable Twitter alternative could suffer. While people may use it — because they don’t like X’s new direction or Elon Musk specifically — they’ll never have a true X-like experience.

Is it just me, or was that an earthquake?


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Back
WhatsApp
Messenger
Viber