Platformer: “Adam Mosseri on the first year of Threads”

But my hope is that whether using Threads or Instagram or Twitter or Tik Tok or YouTube, or whatever it is, that reach is not an end, but it is a means to an end. Because ideally, you are clear with yourself about what you’re trying to get out of the platform. Are you trying to sell tickets to your gigs because you’re a musician? Are you trying to advance a cause because you’re an activist? Are you trying to just raise awareness around your art if you’re an artist?

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That said, we do care about reach, we do try to grow reach. My advice is — and I think what a lot of people don’t realize, because a lot of people are coming over from Instagram — they don’t realize how important the reply game is. If you’re really trying to grow your presence, you should reply much more than you post. And the sum of all your replies is about as valuable as the sum of all the value of all your posts.

When people treat it, like, I’m just going to post and then move on with my day and then post again in a couple days and move on with my day — that’s not what it’s designed for. If it was for that, we wouldn’t have built it as a separate app — we would have built it in Instagram. But we built it so that the reply was as important as the original post — so that you could facilitate, when you’re lucky, these great conversations, which by the way helps with discovery.

Casey Newton

So… the secret recipe for reach on Threads is to become a ‘reply guy’?!

Android Police: “Google Maps Timeline now stores your location data on-device”

Right off the bat, it isn’t a Google change unless something is lost or killed off, and unsurprisingly, it’s time for Timeline on the web to bite the dust. Explaining the change, Google says it won’t have any data to display on the web interface after the switch to on-device location data management through the Maps app.

To retain access to your old Timeline data and ensure subsequent collection is localized, you’ll need to update to a recent version of Maps and follow the instructions in a push notification, in-app alert, or email you receive. You just need to specify your data management preferences on a device of your choice. That’s because the new system curates Timeline for each of your devices independently. Alternatively, you can back your Timeline data to Google servers manually or automatically. This can come in handy if you’re planning to switch to a new phone or tablet without losing the Timeline data.

The email we received mentioned that users have until December 1, 2024, to keep their saved visits and routes on the device or back them up. It warns that inaction could result in partial or complete loss of old data. If you miss the deadline, Google will try to move the last 90 days of location history to the first device you sign in to after the cutoff date, and all the older trips will be auto-deleted. We suggest keeping an eye out for this email.

Chandraveer Mathur

I haven’t received this email notification yet, so I’m still holding on to a slim hope that Google might reconsider until December. Needless to say, this news made me suddenly angry at Google for what I can only regard as a self-serving, user-hostile, and plainly stupid decision. Despite privacy concerns by some, Timeline was one of the best features of Google Maps, and I regularly checked that the places I visited were accurately recorded. The whole point of Timeline is to store your travel logs forever, so that you can revisit those years later to remind yourself of past trips and maybe find inspiration for new ones. Erasing this data automatically after some number of days or when you switch devices defeats this purpose entirely and makes Timeline borderline irrelevant.