New product launch is the box office release equal for tech nerds. Rumors chirped a few weeks ago, teased couple days back, and finally launched today - Threads by Facebook.
So why did Meta launch Threads? Why now and is it just a clone of Twitter? Will it be successful?
Let’s try to break it down.
Why did Meta build Threads?
Twitter has offered more drama than any reality show in the last year. There are polarizing arguments to be made about whether it was good or bad for Twitter, but I’ll take the liberty and say it’s bad. A social network hemorrhaging users on the platform isn’t good by any means.
Total users: In 2023, Twitter currently has 353.90 million users, a 3.93% decrease from 2022. Users are expected to decrease further to 335 million by 2024, a decline of 5.14% compared to 2023.
Users were infuriated more at the owner than the platform or medium itself. This bred a dozen clones that were uniquely differentiated in the app name and brand logo. All visibly identical to Twitter feed. (Mastodon, Spill, BlueSky)
Some of these clones emerged with promise of decentralized network. But none has moved past tech enthusiasts I don’t think. However, some of the recent efforts laid technology innovation on the protocol layer. (more on Fediverse later). And was ripe for a consumer superpower with distribution power to swoop in. Meta obliged.
Meta’s product strategy decisions stem from a modified version of the canonical “build, buy, partner” . It is “Copy, Buy” period. Given Meta is dancing on the edge of triggering anti-trust concerns, they were likely left with one option. And has lately developed penchant for copying what’s Hot.
A second innings of sorts. Meta made a threads app in 2019 and shut it end of 2021. It aimed to be a companion app to Instagram to improve the DM experience with close friends. Why? Time spent on Snapchat was more than on Instagram, and users on Snapchat mostly used it to DM their friends.
Facebook moved on from Snapchat, set sight on TikTok, and is now pouncing on a wounded bird. And seems to have gotten to a good start.
How does Threads app help Meta?
Medium diversification.
Instagram was a photo app that evolved into a video app. People come for the video and occasionally read the text description.
Twitter still is primarily text-based platform supplemented with images/videos.
Medium influences usage patterns. Here’s a full breakdown of how people are using Twitter:
48% to get news
48% to get entertainment
34% to keep in contact with friends and family
33% to follow brands/companies
14% to strengthen their professional network
12% for other purposes
I’d argue the demographic composition of 18-24, and 24-35 are the primary target audience for both app. Most of these folks likely have both Twitter and Instagram. The battle here is share of time spent on the app.
Lot of news breaks on Twitter. Twitter is the Internet comment section for Real-Life live events. Twitter is topical, low effort, and often stream of consciousness for the camera-shy keyboard warriors.
Instagram shared more life-events, while Twitter had chatter about everything else in the world. lnstagram profiles are often private (albeit intentional creators) while Twitter is wide open broadcast (optionally a close audience). People doom-scrolling on Instagram that don’t post much, may be witty tweeters that can now spend time within the Meta-app-verse. More time spent in Meta app, more avenues to show you things you didn’t need but now want to buy.
New Billboards for Ads
Meta is an Ad company (as much as they’d like to pivot from it). Different ways they catch eyeballs, more surface area to throw Ads.
Let’s look at Stories:
1 in 4 Instagram user posts a Story everyday and growing (500M Daily Active Users post stories). They’re ephemeral by design innately invoking sense of FOMO to check them out (what I check the first thing after opening the instagram app). As you swipe through stories, Meta drops in a few Ads. Interestingly, more than 86% of these Brand stories captivate users to watch till the end. And the ones who watch a brand story, 1 in 2 visit the website to make a purchase after seeing the brand’s stories.
The playbook analogy ; Meta builds a new flashy highway road, get enough people on it. And can now plant billboards to get people to see it on their way.
Bringing Twitter audience and the new medium now opens more opportunities to show ads. And more importantly, given App Tracking Transparency changes by Apple, more time spent by users natively within Facebook, more data collected (don’t think anyone’s surprised by the amount of data Threads collects)
What’s uniquely interesting here is the kind of brands that wish to advertise. Instagram was prime spot for many Direct to Consumer brands to flourish - I just bought a bomber jacket I didn’t need from Instagram Ads - it works! B2B Ads felt like someone was suited up attending an uninvited BBQ pool party - totally out of place.
Twitter on the other hand, was OK with B2B. There are micro-communities in Twitter that gave rise to an entirely new form of creators and influencers that wrote short form and long form content, more apt for business style writing. Many of whom run some form of newsletter now.
Meta gets to not just fiddle with after-work content with Instagram, but now position itself to get more of the share of B2B Content Marketers. Given FB is on march to slow death, Meta desperately needed a newer billboards for these marketers. More importantly keeping within the Meta app eco-system - more usage within the ecosystem, better leverage and pricing power for ads in the network.
How is Threads different from Twitter? To start with, not much really, barring some minor typeface and design differences. For someone who’s used Twitter before, there’s nothing more to learn.
However, the tease during onboarding about Threads eventually being part of Fediverse is a big deal.
Traditional Social Networks have been developed to be closed networks. One could have a massive following on Twitter, but will need to build from scratch if they jumped on Instagram, and do it again if they jump on YouTube. Platforms gated users, had disparate identities, never belonged to the creator and controlled how they wished to control your feed and algorithm. They were mostly a blackbox and if you didn’t like it, had to leave and build it all over again.
Fediverse was intended to change that to create a new decentralized social network that create a singular identity not limited by platform.
Think more like email, you could have an email address but use any email client using any creative algorithms to categorize or display emails better.
This is a big shift as this now allows Creators to truly build a following that they can take with them.
More to see how this pans out.
Will Threads be successful? They struck the timing to be right, perhaps with some help from the competitor as well. And the execution so far has been on point.
The onboarding experience is a classic move leveraging existing distribution with Instagram
App loads and feels great. One issue with apps like Mastadon and Farcast has been sub-par experience
Choice of using Fediverse in the future is interesting, as promise of technology was real, but lacked a powerhouse to take it to the masses. Meta has the chops to do that.
[1] https://thesocialshepherd.com/blog/twitter-statistics#
[2] https://business.instagram.com/a/stories