I can definitely see a gap in the market for this now.
The present Twitter alternatives (Mastodon, Bluesky, Spoutible) are just too hobbyist or finicky.
Meta will presumably bring an ease-of-use to this service and, crucially, scale from minute 1. They're the building blocks of Twitter's current incumbency position, and Meta/Threads can replicate them straight out the gate.
That is a huge advantage.
On the other side of the ledger, the utility of Twitter keeps sliding. Not sure how many Hacker News users are Twitter users or what the crossover is, but the whole blue tick 'thing' has reduced the utility in one key surprising way: high quality replies under popular accounts are impossible to find. It's like if you could buy upvotes on Hacker News to get to the top almost. Secondarily to that is the stuff over the last few days with very low rate limits on how many tweets you can view - if you can't use a social network, it tends to stop being useful.
While I wouldn't say Threads is a slam dunk guaranteed success, I would say it's the most probable contender of all the ones out there.
The present Twitter alternatives (Mastodon, Bluesky, Spoutible) are just too hobbyist or finicky.
Meta will presumably bring an ease-of-use to this service and, crucially, scale from minute 1. They're the building blocks of Twitter's current incumbency position, and Meta/Threads can replicate them straight out the gate.
That is a huge advantage.
On the other side of the ledger, the utility of Twitter keeps sliding. Not sure how many Hacker News users are Twitter users or what the crossover is, but the whole blue tick 'thing' has reduced the utility in one key surprising way: high quality replies under popular accounts are impossible to find. It's like if you could buy upvotes on Hacker News to get to the top almost. Secondarily to that is the stuff over the last few days with very low rate limits on how many tweets you can view - if you can't use a social network, it tends to stop being useful.
While I wouldn't say Threads is a slam dunk guaranteed success, I would say it's the most probable contender of all the ones out there.