Fred Wilson is excited about Threads, for the right reason, but I don't think it's going to play out the way he thinks. I replied on Threads, hunting and pecking on my tiny iPhone keyboard (I have huge hands btw). I'll expand on it here... #
He repeats the folklore that Twitter "killed off" its app ecosystem in 2010. Certainly not at a technical level, the problem with Twitter's developer situation was that they didn't do anything to help products get the attention of users, esp important when we were filling gaps in the user experience that users desperately wanted filled. If a corporate platform wants developers they have to do this. #
Even open source platforms need someone to spread the news of reliable and useful additions to the platform. #
Users aren't on their own that adventurous. They like to use what everyone else is using, which makes the bootstrap hard. But the platform vendor can provide the magic that gets it going. #
However, like Fred, I am excited. Because somewhere in this chaos (a good thing) there is at least the possibility of a developer ecosystem. That hasn't been true for a long time. I don't think that will happen in ActivityPub, for technical reasons. It needs a small amount of centralization to make the hurdle for developers surmountable.#
You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)