Social media is hanging by a Threads

Only If you haven’t been on the internet will you have avoided the Meta/Facebook/Instagram/Mark Zuckerberg (delete as appropriate) launch of “Twitter killer” Threads into the world. For everyone else, particularly in the media bubble, it’s the only conversation in town.?

On first impression, it’s a polished product, particularly given the rushed release, and most users will just see it as just Twitter in the style of Instagram . They’re not wrong, but it could be a lot more besides.?

Given the trend of social media becoming more private, do we really need another social network? Is this a business move or just open warfare between Zuckerberg and Musk (before their cage fight)? And what happens now to Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey ’s vision for competitor Bluesky and a truly decentralized social platform??

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the platform had reached 10 million sign-ups in the first seven hours, and that’s before the U.S. woke up. All the details of how to join/follow/post etc. on Threads are here, but what’s more interesting is what this means for social, which — apart from maybe TikTok — is being seen increasingly as the “old way” of traversing the web.?

“Threads looks good,” social media expert and consultant Matt Navarra tells Newsweek . “I think that it's got real potential. It’s obviously only day one, and it's easy to get caught up in a hype cycle with it all… But certainly, in terms of ticking all the boxes for a new platform, I think it does a good job.

“The fact that it's super similar to Twitter and that Twitter is in chaos and in turmoil and inspiring out of control is just perfection for Mark Zuckerberg.”?

This timing has also synced with more Bluesky errors: “We will temporarily be pausing Bluesky sign-ups while our team continues to resolve the existing performance issues,” a @Bluesky post said. This was only for a few hours, but it’s a sign of how much capacity the platform has compared to the behemoth of Meta.?

Think of it like this, using web browsers as proxies to social platforms: Twitter is Chrome, the dominant force in the industry, but many find it frustrating; Threads is Edge, owned by a behemoth but new to the scene; Bluesky is Firefox, for the purists and those who want something a little more technical; and Mastodon —the truly decentralized network — is Tor, for the real internet wizards.?

But all this still ignores the elephant in the room: do we need another social network? Furthermore, should that network be text-based when everything social is shifting to video?

The age of public social media is coming to an end, according to numerous analysts I’ve spoken to, but this seems very much like social as usual. The future is meant to be Web 3.0, where many-to-many communication (the social age) becomes few-to-few, and users get used to communities rather than audiences.?

“An era of the internet is ending, and we’re watching it happen practically in real-time,” journalist David Pierce , of The Verge , wrote. “Twitter has been on a steep and seemingly inexorable decline for, well, years, but especially since Elon Musk bought the company last fall and made a mess of the place.?

“Reddit has spent the last couple of months self-immolating in similar ways… TikTok remains ascendent — and looks ever more likely to be banned in some meaningful way. Instagram has turned into an entertainment platform; nobody’s on Facebook anymore.”?

The future of the web is all but certainly people having more control of their data, so they can pick up their followers/audience and move them to whichever platform they want. Mastodon was the first to allow this meaningfully, and Threads does something similar —you can transfer all your information to another platform if you so desire.?

"Elon Musk should be a little bit twitchy given the success of day one for Mark Zuckerberg's Threads" - Matt Navarra

Having put out a call on Threads and other social platforms this morning (which is in no way scientific or a fair sample), the reaction was either “hurray,” early adopters picking up some of the early bugs, or “what’s the point of this?”

What is the point of this???

Zuckerberg says it’s "an open and friendly public space for conversation" and will allow for "the best parts of Instagram and creating a new experience for text, ideas, and discussing what's on your mind."

There’s no way to private message, there’s no way to limit your feed to just the people you’re following, hashtags aren’t there… at least yet, and users have reported crashing and a few other niggles. But it’s day one.?

When Dorsey sent the first tweet in March 2006 (“just set up my twttr”), nobody could have predicted the vitriol and the polarization and everything else that would come after. For Threads, it’s a clean slate they’ll be keen to avoid as many of the pitfalls of previous networks as possible.?

“The test now is the traction,” Navarra says. “How many people are still there in three to six months' time? What is Elon Musk's response to this? He tends to be quite petulant, so it won't be surprising if he starts blocking links on Twitter for it. And how do people like creators and brands use it? Because that'll be the next thing.?

“Can they, in the months to come, use it to advertise on? Can creators use it to monetize their efforts of spending time on the platform? I think all of these things are things that will need to be considered. Elon Musk should be a little bit twitchy given the success of day one for Mark Zuckerberg 's Threads.”

It’s amazing that more jokes haven’t been made about the way Zuckerberg dresses (Zuckerberg’s threads… anyone?), particularly given he’s already amassed 765,000 followers (and counting) in the first few hours of the platform, but the question remains if this will herald a resurgence of the text-based social web or if it’s a last hurrah.

“You could argue, I suppose, that this is just the natural end of a specific part of the internet,” Pierce wrote. “We spent the last two decades answering a question — what would happen if you put everyone on the planet into a room and let them all talk to each other? — and now we’re moving on to the next one.”

The next one is still a mystery. It was meant to be Discord, it was meant to be the metaverse, and it was meant to be all built on the blockchain. That future definitely hasn’t happened yet. But all the buzz is around a text-based platform that looks almost identical to one launched in 2006. Maybe nothing’s changed??

But then again, Threads is tied to your Instagram account, not your Facebook one. Sorry Facebook, maybe your time really was back in 2006.?

The questions we still don’t have answers to after researching this article: (all musings/questions/opinions welcome to [email protected] if you think you know the answers)?

1. Can Meta really build a platform from the ground up? The last time Mark Zuckerberg started a thing from scratch and succeeded was… Facebook. Oculus, Instagram, and Whatsapp were all purchased when the audience had been found and the seed work had been done. Can this be the one??
2. Can Threads remain civil? The very small sample of posts this morning show many just porting their Twitter posts across. The difference? The level of hate and polarization has lowered to almost zero. Is that sustainable??
3. What’s the business model? The common consensus is that advertising is not the future of digital business models. If Threads isn’t ad-funded as its revenue model, what is the plan?