Since months, Twitter’s competitors have been trying to take advantage of the growing dissatisfaction from its users regarding decisions made by Elon Musk. Those efforts, though, haven’t been able to gain much traction — until now.
In only five days, Meta’s Threads has surpassed the record previously held by ChatGPT, a wildly popular AI-generated app.
Mike Proulx is the vice president and director of research at Forrester ResearchA national market research firm headquartered in Cambridge Mass.
He told TechNewsWorld, “The meteoric growth of Threads in only five days demonstrates how many people long for an alternative to Twitter’s devolution.”
“While Meta deserves to be celebrated, it’s too early to declare a victory,” he warned. “Thread’s success depends on sustained growth and repeated use.” Meta must therefore enhance Thread’s functionality and address privacy concerns.
“But don’t be mistaken, Threads launch is a good example of what you should do,” he said.
Breaking the New User Barrier
Threads, unlike Twitter alternatives such as BlueSky and Mastodon that have to build an audience one user per time, has benefited greatly from its relationship with Meta’s Instagram, the social powerhouse. This relationship allowed Threads overcome a major barrier in the Twitter alternatives derby.
“Threads was able to leap this barrier because Meta connected the new app to Instagram,” said Luke LintzHighkey Enterprises in San Juan is a social media and digital marketing company.
TechNewsWorld reported that “when users sign on to the platform, they directly connect their Instagram page” in order to create an account. This has broken the barrier, because Instagram has more than two billion monthly active users.
Joseph Panzarella a professor in digital marketing and media, said: “By incorporating seamless Instagram integration, Meta was able leverage Instagram’s popular to help Threads leap the initial barrier to attract new users.” Katz School of Science and Health Yeshiva University in New York City.
He told TechNewsWorld that “seamless integration was the key for attracting the initial few million users and fueled the growth exponentially to reach 100 million users.”
Instagram and Threads are so tightly linked that deleting one account will also delete the other.
Work in Progress
Despite its appeal to millions of users Threads seems to be a rushed product in the eyes some commentators.
“Threads does have a bona fide ‘work in progress’ feeling, which could inhibit its broader adoption, particularly with highly popular influencers,” observed Mark N. Vena, president and principal analyst with SmartTech Research San Jose is located in California.
He told TechNewsWorld that “the inability to edit tweets and access threads on a Mac desktop or Windows desktop is a big challenge that legacy Twitter users will not find appealing.”
Lintz also argued that marketing the app seemed to be hurried. “Nobody really heard of the application until one week before launch,” said Lintz.
Elon’s push for Twitter Blue subscriptions and Twitter’s news of a limit on Tweets per day likely contributed to the hurried launch.
Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder of Cloudflare (a content delivery network), tweeted on Sunday that Twitter traffic had been plummeting since the start the year. This was just around the time Musk took control of the operation of the company.
Twitter traffic plummets https://t.co/KSIXqNsu40 pic.twitter.com/mLlbuXVR6r
— Matthew Prince ?? (@eastdakota) July 9, 2023
Panzarella said that from Meta’s point of view, it made perfect sense to launch Threads as soon as possible in order to capitalize on Twitter’s current business problems.
He added that Threads had enough early features for users to give feedback and to prove its viability. It also saved costs by avoiding features such as advertising and editing.
“There are some features not found in Twitter but the company has covered the essentials and the launch was stable,” said Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle ResearchNew York City-based consumer technology consulting firm.
Monopolistic concerns
Meta’s rapid growth has led to concerns from some quarters that Meta will become a social media monopoly.
Lintz claimed that Meta poses a serious threat to social media monopolization. They have Instagram to cater for younger users of short form content, Facebook to cater for older users of short form content and WhatsApp as a messaging platform and social media platform for international use. They now have Threads [for] short-form blogging. It’s worrisome.”
Rubin, speaking to TechNewsWorld, said that there has been much regulatory discussion regarding the breakup of Facebook and Instagram. There is also concern about one company controlling too much of the social media conversation. “Threads can strengthen the case if they cross the billion-user mark.”
Meta’s move onto Twitter’s territory is sending a ominous signal to would-be social network moguls. Lintz predicts that “the only social platforms that will succeed in future are those backed by current large social companies and their funding.”
“The odds are very slim that a new platform will enter the market with no user base,” he said.
News and Info Conduit
Karen Kovacs North director of the Annenberg Program on Online Communities, University of Southern California
“The biggest misconception about Twitter — and Threads being the Twitter killer — is that people like to talk about Twitter as a social network. Twitter’s real value is not as a network of friends. She told TechNewsWorld that the real value of Twitter was news and information.
“Twitter’s not a network of social networks,” she added. It’s a community of journalists and communicators. Twitter’s value is that anyone can post a message on Twitter and anyone can see it.
“When people speak about finding a Twitter replacement, they don’t appear to think of Twitter as a resource of information,” said she. “That’s an enormous mistake.”
“Threads hasn’t been developed as an information platform where people anywhere — from the smallest voice to world leaders — can share information with reporters and communicators worldwide,” she added. If Threads kills Twitter it leaves communicators without a way to tell stories and find information.
