Expectation?
Okay so I've got to be honest...
When the Threads alpha-testing site launched recently I was very skeptical. I've been skeptical for months actually. I was even priming up some trash talk in advance. After all, what's the point? A "social media" website derivative of Hive? Micro-blogging? Who cares? Already Hive doesn't have enough users... and obviously Threads would have even fewer users by default. Far fewer.
And then the long awaited PROJECT BLANK had arrived!
What grandiose title awaited us at the end of this WEB3 arranged-marriage? Oh... just... "LEO" then? The Everything App? Threads?
Kind of reminded me of watching Lost or Game of Thrones only to get to the finale and realize the writers had no idea what they were doing the entire time and just hoped to figure it out by then.
Spoiler alert: they... didn't.
The entire purpose of being on Twitter is that it connects all of the crypto communities + all others together on a single WEB2 client that everyone is using.
Traditional social media sites are defined by their ubiquity. The only way for WEB2 to work in any capacity is to lure millions upon millions upon millions of users to the platform under the guise of "free service". Of course we all know it isn't actually free. They turn their users into Matrix batteries and monetize the data in every way possible.
And now Elon Musk is taking it one step further by charging people to get 'verified' and get boosted on the engagement side of the algorithm. Talk about WEB1 strategy.
You know who else seems to think it's a good idea?
LoL are you kidding me right now?
Now Zuckerturd wants to charge people on Facebook $12 a month for the exact same stupid bullshit? Seriously these greedy kumquats are doing all the heavy lifting for us and sealing their own fate. What better way for WEB3 to make an appearance on the scene and get their foot in the door than to pivot in the exact opposite way? Pay people within the attention-economy for their attention vs forcing people to pay for an artificially scarce algorithm to boost the numbers... hmmm.... I wonder which side they will choose, anon.
All of these developments are giving off extreme streaming-subscription vibes. Remember when Netflix was the only game in town? Everyone was so stoked to pay their $10 a month, cancel their cable TV subscription, and call it good. Now we have Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, HBO Max, YouTube Premium, Paramount+ & Showtime, Hulu, Apple TV, Peacock, AMC+, ETC ETC ETC!!!1!!!1!!!1
Wow
That trade sure did get cramped quickly, didn't it? Within the last year or so I've seen all kinds of remarks on Twitter talking about canceling everything and simply going back to Pirate Bay to get it all for free all over again. That EXACT SAME PATTERN is happening to social media right now. The giants are tightening their grip and trying to squeeze blood from a turnip during a recession, and the people are going to slip right though their fingers as products like NOSTR and HIVE gain adoption.
Speaking of Pirate Bay...
Would you go to some random website that's been known to crypto-jack computers that access it? Would you go to some random website that might feed you a file with viruses or spyware on it? Many of us are willing to take these risks, once again, in order to get "free service". Free movies. Free video games. Free data. Free whatever. Unfortunately there are zero incentives that allow such a p2p network to scale.
However, what if there was an alternative?
What if the SPEAK network had a similar file for download but it cost you 0.01 HBD to get it? Would you pay 1 cent for the file? What if the file was signed by reputable people on the Hive blockchain and you were much more certain that there were no viruses or spyware encoded into it? Is that worth 1 cent? What about 10 cents? What about $1? I'd pay a $1 for a ripped ReLoaded video game if I was 100% sure there wasn't any stupid bullshit encoded into it.
The point here is that even though WEB3 is pay-to-play, we are creating a system in which the players are both the clients and the servers. The players are the ones paying and the players are the ones getting paid. It's the first version of pure-capitalism we've seen since before the industrial revolution. Everyone is a producer, and everyone is a consumer. Competition is not only allowed, but welcomed and useful for all parties concerned.
Do you have a permit for that?
Yeah, it might cost something to get what you want on WEB3, but what many aren't realizing is that this service is provided by infrastructure that rewards anyone in the community willing to help. I think this post was supposed to be about Threads though. Oops. Rant over.
https://alpha.leofinance.io/threads
Threads Reality
While I was skeptical of this launch and was really worried about how it would be received, I've got to admit that I'm actually blown away by how well it's going. The LEO team is in extreme crunchtime right now and they are doing a great job keeping it from falling apart, as many alpha-tests tend to do.
It actually sort of reminds me of when this network hardforked to make downvotes free and I thought that change was going to ruin everything (clearly downvotes would be sold to the highest bidder). Wow... how wrong I was, right? Free downvotes and the dev fund are the only features left from that economic-incentive hardfork boondoggle. And if I'm being honest, testing failed experiments like the convergent curve and 5-minute curation trails was worth it in the end. Look how far we've come. Now we know better.
This is progress.
So I was using threads and I took some random notes:
- no caps on hashtags
- no emoji
- no polls
- pic exploit
- exposes new accounts
- anyone can make a frontend or change the algo
- Twitter and YouTube embeds + links
- clicking away from thread
- 10% default vote
- 12k notifications
Unfortunately...
This is a very basic-bitch alpha test, and I know that a lot of the features that I think should be added are already in the pipe. For example:
So polls might seem like a really trivial thing...
But they really aren't... especially within the context of a Twitter clone. The ability to throw out a question to get answered by random people on the frontend is something Hive hasn't had before. Sure, we've been able to post a link to a poll from our blog posts, but that takes users to an entirely new site dedicated just for polls. It's simply not the same thing, especially when considering UX.
I also have some super random complaints like not being able to capitalize hashtags, use emoji, or change the default upvote from 10% to 1%. Also I think it's cool from a UX perspective that users can see their comments getting upvotes in real time... but for me personally I have 12000 notifications and I don't need to be seeing that as a power-user of the Hive blockchain. I'd like to be able to customize my notifications more by being able to remove anything but actual p2p interactions.
- There's also a picture bug that allowed a very long and skinny JPEG to dominate the feed.
- After responding to someone's thread I click to the side and nothing happens so I have to scroll up and hit the 'X' to exit. Small UX details like this can have a big long-term impact across a large audience.
- It would also be nice to get links working and even Twitter and YouTube embedding if possible (like Peakd.com). YouTube links work on LEO but Tweet API is lacking still.
Significant points of note:
One of the really cool things about threads is that it exposes me to a ton of accounts that I would never be exposed to otherwise. It will be interesting to see how the LEO team develops the algorithm and how content is curated on the platform.
Speaking of algo...
Remember when Elon Musk took over Twitter? He said he was going to open source the algo. Free speech for everyone! Hurray. Yeah, he's since pulled the exact opposite stance and taken away API access in the fight against bots. The point here is that things on Hive like Threads will be truly open source. Bots won't be a problem because resource credits will price most of them out of the ecosystem. Anyone can make an algo. Anyone can make a frontend. Collaboration wins. WEB3 wins.
Darkmode is the only mode; fight me.
My reach on twitter is not good at all. I was thinking there wouldn't be enough people on Threads, but actually I don't get exposed to that many accounts on Twitter either. I've been hardcore shadow-banned and echo-chambered on the platform... and I only saw what it was like to not be caged for the first week or two of Elon's takeover when he just decided to turn it all off (lol). Now I'm fully back in my conspiracy/crypto bubble instead of getting 5-10 follows a day. Lucky to get even one after being memory-holed.
"Does it work now?"
The entire purpose of being on Twitter is that it connects all of the crypto communities + all others together on a single WEB2 client that everyone is using.
Luckily the foundation of WEB3 is the exact opposite of this.
While Threads does not have the users to justify any kind of WEB2 value, it does have a lot of potential and doesn't seem to need millions of users like a traditional social media to be useful. I find it useful already and it's in a very sad alpha version. Surely the upgrades will come in quite quickly during this crunchtime phase.
Conclusion
Been trying to write this post all day but so much is going on all at once it's been hard to retain any kind of focus. In any case I feel like it's all coming together for WEB3 and decentralized social media. WEB2 is going to far as to even sign their own death warrants with this ridiculous algo-boosting subscription model. Not hard to compete with that when you're literally giving money away.
Threads is going to be great for onboarding. I know if I was coming to this network for the first time ever like I did in 2017 I'd of been thrilled to have access to something like this. It's very hard to get noticed on Hive when you're new, and it was much easier to get noticed simply reading and commenting on other posts that actually were getting eyeballs within the attention economy. I see Threads as an extension of this concept. It makes the UX that much more streamlined and it takes away the pressure and performance anxiety from the 'quality content' aspect of the platform.
I was pretty skeptical at first, but it seems like Threads has a pretty exciting future on the platform. The alpha test is going much better than I would have expected and everyone seems to be having a nice time. Onward and upward.