Threads: GRP Media's POV

From Colleen Maguire, Group Media Director

The big picture

After hitting 100 million sign ups in 5 days, Threads has been adopted faster than any online service to date, far surpassing even ChatGPT (10 million users in 40 days). Latest estimates report 150+ million downloads.

Threads was created with a seamless – and very intentional – onboarding process that allowed users to sign in with their Instagram credentials.

Threads users can share text updates and participate in public discussions. They can post messages up to 500 characters long and share images, videos, and links.

Compared to Twitter, it offers greater access and function for free accounts. For example, unverified (unpaid) accounts on Twitter are limited to a maximum character count of 280, while Threads allows up to 500 characters. Additionally, Threads permits all users to post videos up to five minutes in length, whereas Twitter restricts unpaid accounts to videos under 2:20 long.

Challenges so far

Threads has not yet rolled out chronological feeds, which makes real-time announcements from news, sports and local governments less reliable. Other features that don’t yet exist but may be in development include – direct messaging, a feed of only individuals a user follows, a desktop version, and trending topics/hashtags.

Despite Meta having existing data on users and their interests, many initial users found the algorithm lacking, complaining that the main feed was a jumble of celebrities, brands and influencers trying to find their footing in this new space.

Civil rights, digital justice and pro-democracy organizations (including Free Press, Accountable Tech and Media Matters for America) have urged Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri to establish “robust and equitable” safety and transparency policies for the new platform.

The road ahead

As daily active users and time spent fluctuate quickly since launch, it’s crucial for Meta to maintain that momentum and keep users on the app long term. App intelligence firm data.ai has reported shifts in time spent as high as -50%, from 20 minutes to 10 minutes per day.

While advertising is still unavailable, it’s on the horizon – reports of an initial launch of Branded Content Tools ported from Instagram would give marketers an opportunity to begin experimenting with paid promotion. In the meantime, brands and agencies can:

• Use the Platform – spend time there, browse and see how other brands are currently using the platform and how the user culture is evolving.
• Test Content – don’t feel pressured to develop a net new content strategy. During this initial phase it’s okay to test the waters with best performing content from other channels.
• Be Patient – there will be a lot of changes as Meta builds on the existing app / functionality and it’s still too early to tell how sticky Threads will truly be.