Threads is Going to Destroy Twitter

Threads is officially the fastest product to ever reach 100 million downloads, and it only took them 5 days. Twitter, which has already seen a decline in user activity this year, is now at its lowest point ever as people flooded to Threads.

So is this the end of Twitter? Probably not. At 368 million monthly active users, Twitter still has the pulse of the people. But are they under siege? Absolutely.

I was recently listening to the "How I Built This" episode with Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, and she talked about how "you can copy a product all you want, but you can't copy the brand."

But the rise of Threads may very well challenge that. It's taking a product (Twitter) and trying to build a new and improved version of it. Here's how Threads is thriving in week 1.

1?? Seamless sign up experience: signing up takes literally two seconds if you already have an Instagram account.

2?? Auto-follow: when you sign up, there's a "Follow All" button that automatically follows your Instagram mutuals when they join the platform. They also cut out the BS of follower versus following count and just show your number of followers. Simplicity goes a long way here.

3?? Integrated deep-linking: even though Instagram and Threads are two separate apps, they are integrated together seamlessly. When you get on Threads you are given the same username as your Instagram. And you can easily share Threads to Instagram. This drove "word of mouth" adoption because it's visible and visually in your face.

4?? Gamified FOMO: What is your threads number? Mine is 5991476. Humans love comparing, and the lower the number the bigger the flex. "Yeah I was early on Threads." This really pushed people to download it earlier than they may have otherwise.

5?? Town Square AI Filtering - people are surprised by how the conversation is generally light and positive on Threads. Meta themselves said they wanted to go for a "Town Square" vibe and create a positive and creative space and it's clear they are using aggressive moderation tactics to achieve that. It does raise the question of free speech, but Meta has clearly taken a strong stance on what they define as abuse.

6?? Auto-Delete Posts Feature - Twitter has always been about real-time engagement, not historic timelines. So Meta asks why are posts from 10 years ago still there? Threads will soon be rolling out a feature that allows you to set posts to be deleted after 90 days.

7?? Built in Audiences for Creators - One gripe many creators have with Twitter is that it's hard to grow audiences from other platforms onto Twitter. Threads hacked that and many creators are seeing astronomical growth. Kahlil Greene a.k.a. Gen Z Historian, has 600K followers on TikTok, 122K on Instagram, and 1K on Twitter. In 5 days, he already has 12K on Threads.

Zuck and Meta have killed it with the launch of Threads. The interface is as easy to use as Twitter. The content and features are more positive and more relevant to the experience. The growth hacking and following experience is logical and easy.

But the elephant in the room? The content.

When talking to friends about Threads, the ones who are still team Twitter are the ones active daily with a feed built exactly for them. It doesn't just serve content chronologically, it serves the most relevant content to what they like, and Twitter does have that foundation for quality consumption.

Threads, like Facebook and Instagram, will be a chronological feed. But that doesn't always mean the highest-quality content. But for those who missed out on Twitter, Threads is a great new beginning.

Meta appears to have found the "needle in the haystack" with Threads.

Follow me on Threads @nealsivadas.

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Hi I'm Neal! I created the Find Gen Z Series to give a Gen Z perspective on our rapidly changing world of social media, creator economy, AI, and more. If you liked what you read, subscribe below.