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- Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads is probably the app best poised to take down Elon Musk’s Twitter.
- A slew of other platforms tried to steal the blue bird’s perch, but have seen middling success.
- The door’s now open for two billion people to start threading their thoughts in a place that’s not Twitter.
Oh Zuck, you make it look too easy.
Meta’s slated to debut its new rival to Twitter — an app called Threads — on July 6. The timing is impeccable, coming just after Twitter essentially turned itself into the antithesis of doomscrolling.
Twitter’s new rate limits, which block free, unverified users from viewing more than 800 tweets per day, have sent people scurrying for a new text-based platform on which to air their woes and wit.
There’s already a neat club of apps jostling to be the Twitter Killer. Mastodon, the invite-only Bluesky, and former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social have all been touted as new havens for Twitter users crying foul over some gripe — whether it be censorship concerns or Elon Musk turning blue checks into a paid service.
But none of these have boasted the unbridled, blockbuster growth needed to squash the blue bird. Mastodon has between 1.3 to 2.5 million active users, compared to Twitter’s 237.8 million daily active users in 2022. TruthSocial and Bluesky are pretty much just absorbing the opposing factions of a free speech schism, running the risk of forming right- and left-wing echo chambers.
Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg and squad have set up a system purpose-built for a mass Twitter exodus — this time propelled not by grievances, but by the app literally forcing you to stop using it — that will send people slipping right into Threads.
Threads, likely a free service, is supposed to link directly with Instagram, meaning most people probably won’t even have to create a new username to start posting. Considering Meta’s track record, the sign-up process should be as simple as a couple taps on one’s phone.
Screenshots of the app’s interface show that Threads will start suggesting accounts to follow based on your Instagram records, compared to already-existing rivals that mostly plop you into a sea of posts from pundits you hardly know and leave you to build a social circle from scratch.
Threads’ main advantage is probably the number of people already using Instagram, or a reported two billion monthly active users in 2021.
It remains to be seen whether Meta can convert Instagram’s popularity into wild success on Threads, since comparing visual- and text-based social media isn’t exactly apples to apples.
But if there’s one thing Meta has up its sleeve, it’s sheer scale. In the first months of 2023, at least 3.02 billion people per day used an app owned by Meta, whether it’s WhatsApp, Facebook, or Instagram.
The social media giant has also seen success with app clones. Instagram and Facebook Reels, basically Meta’s copy of TikTok, were being viewed more and more frequently over the last year, a recent Morgan Stanley study of 2,000 people found. In April, at least 74% of surveyed Instagram users used Reels, the study said
And Instagram Stories, which is similar to SnapChat, were seen by at least 500 million daily users in 2019, just three years after debuting.
Meanwhile, Meta has been hinting it’s gunning for Twitter and Musk in the midst of their chaotic revamp. Meta’s chief product officer, Chris Cox, has called Threads a response to creators and public figures who wanted a platform that’s “sanely run.”
Musk threw a jab back at Meta on Sunday, in a likely reference to Zuckerberg. “Thank goodness they’re so sanely run,” he wrote.
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