Scattered Threads

I'll give it a chance, but so far I'm not feeling Instagram's new Twitter competitor.

After confidently predicting that Threads by Instagram would go the way of so many unsuccessful Twitter clones, I was forced to reckon with the news that literally everybody on earth except @catturd2 had migrated there:

So I gave in to my FOMO and decided to give it a try much earlier than I’d planned. I found a bunch of people whose opinions I’m interested in reading, and…found myself unable to follow them without being buried in dreck from people I’ve never heard of, and some people I have heard of and usually try to avoid. (Just because I follow a lot of anti-Trump people doesn’t mean I care about Taylor Lorenz, Zuck.)

It turns out that Threads doesn’t yet allow you to view posts from only people you’ve chosen to follow:

Out of the gate, this seemed to be the biggest issue users called out. Threads shows you posts from not just the people you follow — but a range of other accounts you don’t. Given that Threads is literally in its start-up phase, this approach appears designed to ensure users don’t see a blank space when they open up the app. Instagram head Adam Mosseri, replying to several users who asked whether Threads could be set to see only followed accounts, said it’s “on the list” for future enhancements.

I’m sure Meta will make it a priority, but this seems like this is the kind of really, really basic function you’d instinctively include if you’re trying to draw people away from Twitter, an app notorious for flooding you with junk you had no interest in seeing. It reminds me of BlackBerry introducing its Playbook tablet without an email program.

Remember the Playbook? Remember BlackBerry? My point exactly.