Meta Threads Twitter's wings?

Meta took social media by storm on Thursday, with its latest offering - Threads - which is akin to the micro-blogging site - Twitter. Within 7 hours of its launch, it clocked 10 million downloads, setting a new record that far outstrips other platforms to date. It is being touted as the fastest to cross one million users, after ChatGPT (5 days) and Instagram (2.5 months). India saw a slew of Bollywood celebrities, social media influencers and others including external affairs minister S Jaishankar taking to the site on day one.

Remarkably, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, whose last post on Twitter was dated January 2012, returned to the competitor site, soon after launching Threads, to drop an animated image from the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon's episode 'Double Identity', taking a jibe at the Twitter owner and CTO Elon Musk. The meme making the rounds on social media features Spider-Man and his copycat pointing at each other, each accusing the other of being an impostor.

Threads, which was leading the top charts for social networking applications on Apple’s app store, is a standalone app that also allows users to log in using their Instagram credentials and import their Instagram profiles. This presents an opportunity for the app to tap Instagram's over 2 billion monthly active users.

Also read | Threads: Key aspects of Meta's answer to Twitter

Meta’s timing is also noteworthy, launching Threads just when Musk announced a cap on the number of tweets Tweeters can read in a day, as part of a series of unpopular changes that have turned users and advertisers off. The blue bird has been flapping off course since Musk acquired it late last year, observers point out.

According to a recent report by market research platform Similarweb, worldwide visits to twitter.com dropped 7.3% year-over-year in March, marking a third straight month of declines. In fact, Twitter’s unique visitor count on the web also witnessed a y-o-y  drop of 3.3% in March.

Industry experts, DH spoke to, are convinced that Thread will revive Meta’s popularity amongst advertisers and digital marketers, hurting Twitter’s visit log.

“Meta's image in recent months has not been good, with massive layoffs, a VR (virtual reality) debacle and underage activity. This new app could change its image if properly managed,” said Demetrius Lancelot Newton, founder of digital marketing agency Breezy Media. 

“Threads is a potential threat to Twitter as they look to acquire the same English users that Twitter has,” co-founder and chief executive of homegrown microblogging platform Koo, Aprameya Radhakrishna, wrote in a LinkedIn post within hours of Threads’ launch. 

Calling the app the  “young Twitter,” Harish Bijoor, business & brand-strategy specialist and founder of Harish Bijoor Consults Inc, said, “If Meta has Facebook as a 40-year-old persona, Instagram is all of 25 and Threads can aspire to a younger and zippier profile.”

Threads vs Twitter

“Threads feels like a breath of fresh air amidst all the Instagram reels and algorithm issues,” expressed Japleen Kaur, who goes by the handle “millennialladki” leading 27.4K followers on Instagram. 

Though the app display is very similar to Twitter, Threads offers an interface similar to Instagram as well. There are icons to like, repost, reply to or quote a “thread,” and counters showing the number of likes and replies that a post has received.

Although Instagram users are accustomed to a visually-oriented feed, there are creators who have already utilised the platform for microblogging through carousels. These creators and their followers may readily adopt Threads as a natural progression, explained Rhea Mehta, founder of online marketing firm Digiduck.

“If executed effectively, it has the potential to attract dissatisfied Twitter users and even entice individuals who haven't yet explored microblogging platforms,” she added. 

However, experts also argued that microblogging has long been Twitter's stronghold, and competing in this space won't be easy. Real-time news, trending topics and the extensive network of influencers, journalists and public figures already established on Twitter present a formidable challenge for Threads. 

The character limit for posts on Threads is 500, which is more than Twitter's 280-character threshold, and can include links, photos and videos up to five minutes long.

“We’ll be adding a number of new features……including improved recommendations in feed and a more robust search function that makes it easier to follow topics and trends in real time,” Meta revealed in a press statement. 

Interestingly, the app which is currently present in 100 countries, doesn’t feature “direct messaging”, which means all communication will be open to the public. 

Another Instagrammer - Dr Manan Vora - closed in on 4,000 followers on Threads within a couple of hours of registering on the app.

Experts also suggested Threads could be more beneficial for direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands and small businesses that have so far not been able to leverage Twitter or LinkedIn.

“Brands can use it to share behind-the-scenes content that helps them connect with their audience on a more personal level, share more frequent updates and keep the audience engaged and updated and promote offers and discounts more effectively, which is currently not that effective with Instagram stories as they disappear in 24 hours,” said Vivek Yadav, co-founder of Cosmofeed, a monetisation platform for social media content creators.