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Comment by skilled | Hacker News Reader

No it doesn't. It has 100M Instagram users who once in a while (intentionally or not) click on Threads, and Meta is peddling that as MAUs.

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Monthly active users (MAU) is a key performance indicator (KPI) used by social networking and other companies to count the number of unique users who have visited a site within the past month [1].

There is no distinction of intention in this metric.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/monthly-active-user-mau...

The metric is broken

And?

When you sign up you have to use Instagram. You then cannot delete you account without losing Instagram.

So then Instagram gets thread notifications.

Clicking on one becomes a visit and goes part of the MAU metric.

Threads has no users.

If you're seeing a thread notification that means a user has posted something.

So by definition it has users. In fact quite a lot of them.

I have 6 followers and 30 notifications telling me I have 6 followers. It keeps notifying me I have 6 followers… it’s trying to get me to go look.

So no notifications are not indications of people being active.

You need to be a little bit smarter than that if you wanna "fix" other people's comments. Understanding it is the bare minimum.

I don't think you understand my comment, can you point out where you think I lack understanding?

we all understood your comment and know what MAU is. You didn't understand that 100M users clicking on the threads button through Instagram once in a month isn't active users. No pedantry needed.

That is, by definition, monthly active users and the same way that basically everywhere calculates it. And yes, one click a month is considered an active user.

You could compute more satisfying metrics like “how active is my average user” and that does tell a story. But MAU says a lot about a product’s reach even if it feels uncompellingly broad.

> That is, by definition, monthly active users

That might be, by definition, "MAU", a vanity metric used by corporate-brainwashed people working to pump profit through financial quarters. Not "monthly active users", which is a phrase that has a meaning by itself - people actively using a product. Doesn't matter what Meta product managers say or other people trying to get raises by raising pageviews and calling it "MAUs".

Not coincidentally, Meta is having a hard time keeping their real active users on all their platforms. Throwing tantrums saying that this is the definition of MAU!1! won't save them.

Metric becomes target.

yeah, this number has to be unreal. every time I go in and check it out it’s like a handful of content farms, and two to three real users (one of which works at Instagram)

My experience is completely different.

I see nothing but real people, no content farms and plenty of activity.

As with every site like this it really depends on who you follow.

Yeah

Note who shares Threads screenshots: either the person itself or it's a dunk on how threads is boring/meaningless

Zuck created the AOL of short messages, it's as if the bluechecks on twitter got 10x more views than on Twitter itself

Speaking of, I think I haven't seen any screenshots of Threads or Bluesky posts anywhere on the Internet

Is that better or worse than having bots?

> No it doesn't.

Source?

Yep. Instagram shoves Threads excerpts into my feed at regular intervals. I’m pretty sure I don’t have a Threads account, whatever that means. I at the very least don’t have an ICQ-esque number my name on my Instagram profile. I’m being explicit here to preempt someone well-actuallying me about a shared accounts database or something.

Anyways, at which point am I considered a Threads user? If I stop scrolling to show my partner how absurd it is that they’re doing this? When I accidentally press in that item in my feed?

My normal Instagram feed is at least 25% screenshots of Tweets anyway, and the Thread advertisement interstitial gives you the impression that you can press to “view more” of whatever recycled thing is in the Threads post they’ve decided to shove in your face. So it could very well just be 100M people that pressed “See more”, and that’s one of the more generous explanations.

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