Gaining an initial user base is a common pain point for most startups: How does a new app obtain its first group of users and leverage this to reach a larger audience? Typically, it's a process of rapid iteration and persistent validation.
However, this is not an issue for Meta's Threads.
Supported by Instagram and the increasing exodus sentiment of Twitter users, Threads managed to acquire 100 million users within just five days of launch.
In comparison, Instagram took two and a half years to achieve this number, viral sensation TikTok took nine months, and even ChatGPT took two months.
At first glance, Threads seems to have succeeded, appearing a mere step away from replacing Twitter. But is this really the case?
Despite Mark Zuckerberg's numerous posts on Threads celebrating its success, the challenges and potential crises looming over this trendy app remain hidden.
01. Threads is (Still) No Twitter
Threads hitting 100 million users in just five days prompted some to describe it as the most spectacular 'population migration' in the history of the Internet. However, the term 'population migration' implies people moving from place A to live permanently in place B.
But have the new users of Threads really left Twitter forever? In other words, can Threads truly replace Twitter?
Concern 1: Abandoning News
Before Elon Musk took the helm, Twitter was the go-to platform for news and breaking events.
For a long time, it has been the place where journalists, institutions, scholars, and the public share real-time critical information.
According to 2015 data from the Pew Research Center in the U.S., while both Facebook and Twitter saw 63% of users following news on their platforms, 59% of Twitter users would follow news events when they occurred, compared to just 31% on Facebook - almost twice as much. With Twitter's more open follower relationships, political events, international news, business, and sports information receive higher attention.
In this aspect of 'hard news,' Threads has chosen to abstain completely.
Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, indicated in a conversation with The Verge, a U.S. tech media outlet, that Threads "wouldn't encourage political and hard news". He suggested that Threads would be a 'brand-safe' space for users interested in a less confrontational environment, rather than focusing on replacing Twitter.
As for Twitter, the CEO didn't underestimate the competition: "Twitter has a long history; it has an extremely strong and vibrant community, with a very potent network effect."
Concern 2: Mall VS Town Square
The decision to dismiss news highlights the inherent difference between Threads and Twitter - Threads is more accurately a text-based 'Instagram' than a Twitter in Instagram's clothing.
Benefiting from the massive user relationships imported directly from Instagram, Threads swiftly reached its hundred-million-user milestone. However, this also means that everything you disliked on Instagram has migrated over - brands advertising, self-promoters, influencers selling the illusion of a perfect life...
Even though Threads currently promises not to serve ads, all of its efforts today seem to cater to advertisers, including Meta's assurance that "Threads is a more sensible, friendlier place". To a certain extent, Threads was born sensing Twitter's blood in the water. Since Musk took over Twitter, the surge in hate speech and heightened uncertainty on the platform has frightened away a significant number of advertisers.
Zuckerberg wrote on his Threads: "Our goal is to maintain friendliness as it expands. I believe it's possible and will ultimately be the key to its success. This is why Twitter has never achieved the success I believe it should have, and we hope to succeed differently."
Musk responded: "Being attacked by strangers on Twitter is better than indulging in the fake happiness of Instagram, which masks pain."
In a sense, Zuckerberg's Threads post and Musk's tweet epitomize the greatest difference between the two similar apps - Threads resembles a large American shopping mall, while Twitter feels more like a town square brimming with diverse voices.
Concern 3: Adult Content
In addition to avoiding politics, creating a 'better life' also means prohibiting nudity or any content deemed sexually suggestive.
While adult content might not be an ideal marketing strategy, who's to say it's not part of freedom of speech? The prohibition of explicit content in 2018 nearly killed the veteran social media platform Tumblr, which had to announce the reopening of adult content in 2022.
Users might not openly say, "I have to stay on Twitter because I want to see butts," but they vote with their feet.
Concern 4: Migration Cost & Product Locusts
One advantage Threads holds over Twitter is that your social relationships established on Instagram are mostly based on the real world, which means the barrier to entry for almost anyone using this service is quite low. Meanwhile, a significant portion of Threads' feed comes from algorithmic recommendations. This means even if you don't know who to follow or what your interests are, the system will find content you're likely to enjoy.
In contrast, even though Twitter also offers algorithmic recommendations, the core is following people you don't know based on your interests. It can be a bit daunting at first, as it's an active following behavior, and not everyone can clearly know what they're interested in. However, once users establish this interest-following network, the cost of migration is high:
- The people you're interested in may not appear on Threads.
- Rebuilding your follow list is an exceedingly painful task.
Twitter users in 2023 might want a similar platform, but they definitely don't want to lose the social relationships they've established on Twitter.
During this wave of migration to Threads, an old term has resurfaced - 'product locusts.' It refers to those who use the product out of curiosity, not because of their own needs, like spectators, investors looking for projects, or product managers conducting competitive research. Often, once the novelty wears off, these people leave en masse, like a swarm of locusts.
A large part of the hype on social networks about Threads comes from these 'locusts.' But after the locusts have moved on, how many real users will remain? The Clubhouse app, once seen as the new form of social network and hugely popular in 2021, is now rarely mentioned.
02. Another Successful Clone?
People who have plans to leave Threads are already voicing their complaints.
Due to its mandatory linkage with Instagram accounts, any user who removes their Threads account will also end up deleting their Instagram account. The compromise is to disable the Threads account, but this only serves to hide your information. One user attempting to delete their Threads account expressed frustration, suggesting that Threads knew people would quickly tire of it, so they made it into a trap.
In the legal arena, Threads is also facing potential risks. Hours after the launch of Threads, Twitter's lawyer, Alex Spiro, sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg accusing Meta of hiring dozens of former Twitter employees and stealing Twitter's trade secrets and intellectual property. Andy Stone, Meta's Director of Public Relations, denied Twitter's allegations, stating there was no truth to claims that anyone on the Threads engineering team was a former Twitter employee.
Even though Threads launched at an opportune time, releasing a product that is virtually identical in function and attempting to replace another product, only underscores the lack of creativity at Meta.
Perhaps all of Zuckerberg's creativity was exhausted during his time 'rating campus beauties'. Over the past 10 years, the most successful decisions of this social networking giant have come through acquisitions (WhatsApp, Instagram) and imitation of competitors (Snapchat, TikTok).
Eugene Wei, former Chief Analyst of Amazon's Strategic Department, summarized two underlying rules of social network evolution in his work, 'Status as a Service':
- People are status-seeking monkeys.
- People will seek the most effective ways to acquire social capital.
The first point suggests that in social networks, all users naturally desire influence. To stimulate this mindset, social networks must design a unique 'Proof of Work' mechanism to filter out 'high-value users'. These individuals gain attention through their views, photos, or videos, thus becoming the so-called Big Vs.
For older social networks, the firm establishment of old social capital makes it difficult for newcomers to achieve high capital returns, leading to a slow drain of community vitality. At this point, people tend to migrate to new social platforms, because new platforms issue new social currencies, giving newcomers more opportunities to stand out. This is what it means that 'people will seek the most effective ways to acquire social capital.'
In terms of status-driven social networks, "copying existing proof-of-work mechanisms is the worst strategy," Wei writes. If the proof of work is the same, then you haven't truly created a new status ladder game.
Users won't arbitrarily migrate to a 'knockoff app' unless the migration benefits are enough to cover migration costs.
In other words, as long as Twitter doesn't deteriorate to the point of being unbearable, users will continue to stick around.
