THREAD ALL ABOUT IT
Meta launched the newest member of its app family this week with Threads, and I have all the thoughts.
The biggest one is that I’m reminded how cringe everyone gets when a new social platform arrives. The majority of posts on a new platform are from users talking about how they’re on the new platform and how great the new platform is. It’s like going to a fabulous party but then spending the whole time telling other people at the party how great the party is.
Cringe aside, here are my unfiltered first impressions of Threads.
WHAT IS GOOD.
Making it super easy to create an account from Instagram. This reduces the barrier to join and means that IG users only need to press a couple of buttons to register. The side effect of this is that it hugely inflating their first quarter user numbers. It’ll be interesting to map this against MAUs and BAUs.
Mining your Facebook and Instagram connections for potential accounts to follow. I like this approach better than how Medium.com attempts to find relevant accounts based on very broad topics.
Allowing people to pre-emptively send follow requests even if you haven’t set up an account, meaning that new users can pop on and find they already have followers and get a nice dopamine hit.
A fun website that it’s literally a visualisation of the logo and the idea of community simultaneously. (The QR code lead to an error message about a bug app though.)
Sharable content (although suspiciously like the tweet > IG stories post type) to help cross pollinate users from Instagram over to Threads, through people seeing their friends posting on the platform.
Creating an app in the Meta family that feels like it has potential to be on the forefront of culture, the way Instagram was pre-TikTok and the way Facebook was pre-Instagram. Both platforms these days feel like 9gag back in the day—that is, a place where content that’s reached critical mass on Reddit, 4chan or Twitter can be re-shared to the masses. Threads might be their play at having a space for originators of culture to post.
Meta also has a much better record at upholding community standards than Twitter. Team Zuck has a chequered past but is miles ahead of Twitter. This might fill a nice Twitter-shaped hole for anyone who jumped off after Elon started to ruin things.
Threads also presents a very real and meaningful alternative to Instagram for fading Facebook users. People wanting something new or different to Facebook, who don’t want that #instagood life and want something that feels safer/more normal than Mastodon might find Threads very appealing.
Meta already have existing systems for advertising and customer support, so I’m confident that agencies like Bolster will get a first look in and support as we need it. Twitter’s support for agencies in Australia is abysmal.
WHAT IS DUBIOUS.
The first post I saw was from Paris Hilton. Considering the sheer amount of data they have on me, I have no idea how their algorithm calculated this as appealing to me.
I know I also listed this as a plus, but I loathe that Meta used my face/profile/likeness to sell Threads to new users before I signed up. I only set up an account today, but any friends who signed up earlier this week would’ve seen my face and name listed on the app as a potential follow, realistically being a part of the selling point for the app. It’s probably buried in T&Cs but it’s a bit gross.
Meta has also assumed that I want to have the same ‘people’ between all platforms. I don’t want my mum to follow me on Instagram but I like being connected on Facebook. I want to follow my favourite retailer on Instagram to see how they’ve styled things, but I don’t want to follow them on Pinterest because they post boring product pictures. I might follow an artist on Spotify and TikTok, but I don’t want to follow them on YouTube. It’s kind of weird to assume this between Instagram to Threads, considering how different they are.
And the elephant in the room. I’m no IP law expert, but it’s clear that Threads is heavily inspired by Twitter. Individually the features are pretty common on social media (e.g. threaded replies like Reddit, 4chan et al, and re-sharing posts like Tumblr. However, these features collectively combined make Threads just look like an upgraded Twitter. Sounds like there’s already a potential lawsuit on the horizon.
WHAT I HOPE THEY DO.
Meta borrows a lot from TikTok, and one thing I hope they steal is their rivals ‘make TikToks not ads’ slogan for brands. The best ads on platform will be Threads that feel native to the app, and just amplified to the right users. This means that they shouldn’t be add Threads as an Advantage+ Meta placement and just allow existing content to roll out there too.
The strain of having to manage yet another social platform is a lot. I hope they stick to 1:1 or 16:9 assets so that we don’t have to train our clients to give us a different aspect ratio. (Anyone remember 4:5?!) If it’s anything like Twitter than I’m assuming square and vertical will be it.
I hope they differentiate how Threads will be different from Twitter for users and brands. Will the best content on both platforms be the same? Why should we kill our clients’ Twitter accounts for Threads?
AND FINALLY, WHAT’S MY PERSONAL TAKE?
I got Twitter in 2008, and I was a bit of an addict. I’ve now deleted my account so I can’t say for sure, but from memory my tweet count was somewhere in the neighbourhood of 80K posts. The platform lost its spark after the constant oversharing from everyone (myself included), but the final nail in the coffin was reading So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson. Hopping onto Threads this week has felt a bit like I’m back in 2009, reading a collection of extremely disparate posts from a bunch of strangers yelling into the abyss, all fighting to sound smart or funny. (A pretty good description for Twitter as well, funnily enough.)
I adore Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism and have been working on becoming a more conscious media consumer. The idea of both Twitter and Threads horrifies me. Digital dementia from social media overuse is a very real thing.
I want less apps designed to fight for my attention. I want inspiring, aspirational slow apps. I want deliberate content that’s harder to make so that content creators really want to share something. I want content that’s harder to consume too because I want to work for my entertainment, like real books or hour-long YouTube videos. I want media that takes up my full mental bandwidth to deliciously enjoy. I want content that I can’t second screen to (and won’t want to). I want to wait for the next episode for a full week. I want evergreen content like Pinterest. And yes, I believe advertising can exist in this space, and in a more meaningful way than the current ecosystem.
I personally will be recommending Threads as a Twitter replacement for my clients to test out, but I promise you I won’t be adding Threads to my phone’s home page anytime soon.
