Threads? Threads! Threads. That was a chunk of my week, and forms a worrying amount of where I spent my time. Sadly.

Published stuff

My Stuff column this week is How Threads became part a world where your job is to check 500 social media apps a day. I look into the future and see where things will go.

Twitter finally went bankrupt and was bought by a man with a suspicious moustache called Zark Muckerberg.

You heard it here first, etc.

Stuff’s August issue is out, and includes my regulars: a round-up of noise apps, an explainer on how to use your phone to enjoy music more, and a back-page column on the Apple Newton MessagePad that’s one of my all-time favourites for the mag.

Elsewhere, the new issue of Swipe arrived on iPhone and iPad. I write for every issue and in #279 dig into a month of Duolingo and outline my thoughts on Apple Vision Pro.

Other stuff

I had a spat with BlaBlaCar. Someone had apparently signed up with my email and started driving people around. I was getting bombarded with messages. In the end, I password-reset the account and took a bunch of screenshots. Shortly thereafter, it was blocked for “suspicious activity”, and I received a threatening email in Portuguese that told me my information may be sent to the police and tax authorities.

Good job, everyone!

Naturally, BlaBlaCar’s press team hasn’t responded to my questions related to this. Its Twitter team did at least apologise, although wrongly inferred its emails were designed to inform people in my situation about what was happening, and then bizarrely recommended I change the password on my email. Er, no. My account was not breached. BlaBlaCar’s system is inept.

Minus eleven billion out of five, then, for BlaBlaCar. Would not use. Ever.

One might argue a similar rating could be applied to Meta’s Twitter knock-off, Threads. That launched last week and everyone has an opinion about it either being the most amazing thing ever, or Satan made digital flesh as a microblogging social network.

My thoughts mostly align with those of Ian Betteridge. I think Twitter is screwed, Bluesky is in deep trouble, and Mastodon will continue tootling along. But I like Threads a bit less than Ian, and my feed hasn’t got that much better than it was when I first started. (If you’ve not signed up yet, Threads fills your feed full of blue-tick influencers mostly spouting banal rubbish. Fun times.)

It rarely takes that much scrolling before I’m immersed in some kind of influencer/brand hellscape, where DoorDash and Starbucks are chatting each other up, like the most low-rent text-based romantic comedy imaginable.

Still, at least that’s a good indication of when it’s time to step away from the screen and go and stand in the rain, screaming at the sky.