Four months of development but at least fifteen years of jealousy later, Meta finally settles with its new Threads application in the social space hitherto mainly occupied by Twitter: that of short-length social publications. Will Instagram’s little brother find a lasting place in the microblogging market?
Threads seems to be the result of two factors: First, the unofficial maxim of ex-Facebook Meta has always been: if you can’t redeem them, copy them. In 2008, Facebook saw its offer to buy US$500 million be refused by Twitter, recently confided one of its co-founders, Biz Stone.
The launch of Threads is reminiscent of how stories were integrated into Facebook and Instagram, short ephemeral posts directly taken from Snapchat. It is also the same strategy that led to the creation of the realsthese short playful videos inserted on Facebook to mow the grass under the foot of TikTok.
Given the complete rout that Twitter, now owned by multi-billionaire Elon Musk, is undergoing these days, the moment could not have been better chosen by Meta to launch a new social network borrowing its main characteristics.
Why now?
Meta has an enormous weight in the social network market, but for a few months, its growth has run out of steam. The opportunity is therefore a good one to relaunch by diversifying its offer a bit.
The moment chosen and the strategy adopted are a delight for financial analysts. Thursday morning, not quite 12 hours after the launch in 100 countries of the Threads application for Android phones and for the iPhone, the firm KeyBanc Capital calculated that Threads had the potential to pick up at least a third of the approximately 368 million regular followers that Twitter had around the world at the end of 2022.
The firm believes that half of Twitter users in Canada and the United States could migrate to Threads before the end of 2024.
How it works?
When it was launched, Instagram was called the “Twitter of photography”. Threads is the Instagram of text messages. Instagram users also automatically have their Threads account ready to be activated, since the two share the same bank of subscribers. Like Instagram in its early days, Threads is only offered as a mobile app.
As on Twitter, one can publish on Threads short messages – of a maximum length of 500 characters in his case – accompanied or not by photos or hyperlinks. We can subscribe to the account of people who interest us and comment or share their publications.
Also, and not without irony: you cannot modify on Threads a publication already published, a shortcoming of Twitter which has irritated its users for years.
What sets Threads apart from Twitter?
Threads cannot be searched by hashtag. Customization of the publication feed is also limited, while you can choose between two more or less personalized feeds on the Twitter side. Algorithms — not their timeline — decide the order of posts on Threads.
The app went live quickly and improvements will follow. The advertising platform that would eventually allow Meta to generate revenue from this new application will surely appear in the coming weeks. Analysts say Threads would add up to US$800 million to Meta’s ad revenue in 2024 alone.
Several post management tools are missing from Threads. Scheduling, metrics and promotion do not exist, which at the moment reduces the appeal of the platform for influencers and advertisers, an absence that the public probably appreciates. There are currently no fake accounts or automated accounts, which should be soon. It does lighten the mood a lot on Threads though.
Who’s already on Threads?
More than 5 million accounts have been created on Threads in the first hours of its launch on Wednesday evening.
Among these, Meta has convinced partners to join its social network from day one and post messages there frequently. Netflix quickly took the lead on the platform commenting on the launch of Threads. Airbnb and Guinness World Records were also early guests on Threads. English-speaking personalities are also present, including chef Gordon Ramsay, actor Jack Black and pop singer Shakira.
In Quebec, one wonders if personalities who are currently shunning Twitter, such as host Guy A. Lepage, will be attracted to Threads. Some early adopters are amused to find that at this point, even the most well-known mainstream personalities aren’t accumulating masses of subscribers on Threads.
Is Threads safe?
Yes and no. The odds are pretty slim that personal information shared with Threads will end up in the hands of a central government like China’s, a criticism often heard about TikTok.
That said, the Threads app collects a lot of data once you install it on your phone. Meta, while not China, is a personal data siphoning machine. It’s his business model.
Threads may access data related to the health and financial status of its users by default. She also regularly inquires about their exact location. She can retrieve the entire browsing history and can take a look at the address book.
It’s a lot. This is the reason why Threads is not available for European internet users. The European Union considers the way Facebook collects data from its users to be exaggerated.
Elsewhere in the world, this is the price to pay for free access to Threads. Because on the Internet, as we know, nothing is ever really free…