Last week, tech commentators were flush with stories about the speed of new users on Threads. Unprecedented downloads! A sign that Meta is stronger than ever! Networks born in one service can transfer to another! This week? There’s a lot of speculation that Threads is crashing. Folks keep asking me what my take is on Threads (and Mastodon and Bluesky and …) and I keep responding with the same story: we’ll see. And every time I do, I’m reminded of talking to historians who, when you ask them about the last hundred years, they say “we’ll see.”
I immediately thought of your concept of context collapse when I first went on threads. I don’t know anyone I follow on twitter, it’s a totally different experience. I’m on twitter for what I’m interested in, not for my friends. And so when threads came along just tryna copy twitter I thought this ain’t gonna work cus my friends don’t care about the sort of things I care about and post about on twitter. This issues was confirmed as such when I did a long post on threads about the issue of context collapse and only one friend liked or commented at all (which was literally just “slay”). It was a little exciting at the beginning seeing my friends post, but that subsided soon enoguh and all that was left was the annoying content farms (its so dumb threads launched without a “following” feed). After a week I stopped checking if anyone was posting and deleted the app.
I dunno why social media platforms don’t think more about cultivating networks. Unless it’s like YouTube or TikTok (which I don’t really consider social media) which are v content production heavy, social media is all about the networks, the whole reason you’re there is because the people you know (or are interested in due to a shared interest) are also there.
As an inveterate social media non-user, this was a typically savvy Danah Boyd batch of insights. I now have been introduced to concepts I'm able put into my HTHM (Happy To Have Missed) bucket. I will say that the idea of Threads collapsing after it's initial flurry couldn't happen to a more hubristic enterprise. Yeah, I'm a curmudgeon. Sue mee.
This is a great piece. Been a fan since your early work contrasting MySpace and Facebook. Looking forward to this Substack making me more aware of what you're writing about.
I immediately thought of your concept of context collapse when I first went on threads. I don’t know anyone I follow on twitter, it’s a totally different experience. I’m on twitter for what I’m interested in, not for my friends. And so when threads came along just tryna copy twitter I thought this ain’t gonna work cus my friends don’t care about the sort of things I care about and post about on twitter. This issues was confirmed as such when I did a long post on threads about the issue of context collapse and only one friend liked or commented at all (which was literally just “slay”). It was a little exciting at the beginning seeing my friends post, but that subsided soon enoguh and all that was left was the annoying content farms (its so dumb threads launched without a “following” feed). After a week I stopped checking if anyone was posting and deleted the app.
I dunno why social media platforms don’t think more about cultivating networks. Unless it’s like YouTube or TikTok (which I don’t really consider social media) which are v content production heavy, social media is all about the networks, the whole reason you’re there is because the people you know (or are interested in due to a shared interest) are also there.
I remember Orkut. As an historian, I guess I still have to suspend judgment on it? 😉
I'm not sure "norm" is exactly the term here, though it's close. Somewhere between norm, affordance, and social grammar.
As an inveterate social media non-user, this was a typically savvy Danah Boyd batch of insights. I now have been introduced to concepts I'm able put into my HTHM (Happy To Have Missed) bucket. I will say that the idea of Threads collapsing after it's initial flurry couldn't happen to a more hubristic enterprise. Yeah, I'm a curmudgeon. Sue mee.
This is a great piece. Been a fan since your early work contrasting MySpace and Facebook. Looking forward to this Substack making me more aware of what you're writing about.