Threads: The Ultimate Game-Changer that will Decimate Twitter

The whole world is talking about just one thing, and that is Mark Zuckerberg’s new social media app. Threads! Threads is a powerful mobile application designed to enhance your messaging experience on social media platforms, with a focus on Instagram. It offers a range of features that allow you to communicate and share moments with your close friends in a more private and personalized way. With Threads, you can create a dedicated space for your closest friends, where you can easily share photos, videos, and text messages. The app offers a simple and intuitive interface, making it easy to navigate and connect with your inner circle.

Threads, grew to 2 million signups in just the first 2 hours, and then 30 million signups the morning after its launch. No app in the history of mankind has achieved these numbers. While most people are calling it a copy paste of Twitter, the Threads app has more to it. Alot of people might think that the Threads app release was very opportunistic and that users are not going to stay long term, but it has the potential to overtake Twitter.
Here is why.

“Network Effects and the Power of Friends: The Rise of Threads in Social Media”

The first reason is something in social media called Network effects. Andrew Chan is a very famous investor who Costley talks about the ideas, behind network effects. It basically means that that the biggest feature in a social media app is not the fact that it has DM’s or News Feed or any of those things. The biggest feature is that your friends are there. It basically means that when more people use a product or service, its value increases. If all the friends are on one app, we want to be on that app. According to monthly active users, most of our friends are more likely to be on Instagram than on Twitter. Twitter has 396 million monthly active users, but Instagram has 1 billion monthly active users, more than two times that of Twitter and the last three days, most of those users have seen stories of their friends of this new thing called“Threads”. So they’ve seen all their friends going on to Threads. They say, Why not check it out? The added incentive is that when a new user gets on threads, it is so easy for them to move their social graph. That is their followers, connections, etc. to this new platform. If the same people had to use Twitter, they’d be starting from zero. And this adds a lot of friction.

One of the standout features of Threads is the ability to set status updates that automatically reflect your current activity or location. This allows your friends to know what you’re up to without the need for constant messaging. Whether you’re at a concert, exploring a new city, or simply chilling at home, you can effortlessly share these moments with your chosen group.

“Threads App Emerges as an Alternative to Twitter”

The second reason that people are leaving is paradoxically, Elon Musk. No, not because he’s a bad operator or because he’s ruining Twitter. That is a very subjective opinion. But Elon Musk is the biggest celebrity in the world. And Mark Zuckerberg knows this. That’s why when Elon talked about the fight,
Mark Zuckerberg put up a story saying saying ‘Send location’. Now, this fight may not happen. And it ended up a meme.

But regardless, Zuckerberg successfully baited the biggest celebrity in the world to inadvertently shine a spotlight on him. While Elon and the media were focused on the cage match, Threads app came in and capitalized on all of this pent up attention. And that’s not the only thing. Elon Musk, in order to save costs enforced a rate limit on Twitter recently. Meaning, that if you’re an unverified account, you can only see 600 tweets. And if you’re completely new and unverified, you can see just 300 tweets. He did this because a lot of bots apparently were scraping Twitter. But a lot of people believed he did it to reduce the cloud costs that Twitter is already spending on. This made many Twitter users unhappy and Threads launched at the exact time to provide an alternative to Twitter.

Threads prioritizes privacy and control over your shared content. You have full control over who can view your updates and only your approved friends can interact with you on the app. This ensures a more intimate and secure environment for your conversations.In addition to individual conversations, Threads also provides access to the larger Instagram platform.
You can easily view and respond to messages from your Instagram Direct inbox, allowing for seamless integration between the two platforms. Overall, Threads is an ideal tool for those seeking a more personalized and focused messaging experience with their closest friends. It offers a range of features designed to enhance communication, while maintaining privacy and control over your shared content.

Intuitive Design and User-Friendly Features:

The final reason is the design of the threads app. Once you get on the threads app and use it the design feels familiar all these small icons and other UI elements feel very intuitive. It’s almost like a clone of Twitter. That’s because most of UI elements are the same ones we are used to in Instagram, Threads has also made a decision to hide the following count of the number of people you follow.

This incentivized people to follow as many accounts as possible without the fear of being judged. This led to more interactions and engagement on the platform. Threads is also designed to be nicer to people. If you don’t like a comment on a thread, you can easily hide it for everyone on threads. This is difficult to do on Twitter because you can just click and expand that view. Now I’ve told you that step one is done, which is get the users on the platform.

Step two is retaining the users. There is a saying that in social media it’s very hard for multiple platforms to exist. If you look at software as a service, if you look at a segment like sales tools. There are hundreds of sales tools and many of them can exist in their own niches. But in social media, the minute MySpace came or code died, the minute Facebook came, MySpace died, the minute Instagram came, Facebook eventually died. Even in the case of Instagram, they launched something called IGTV to take on YouTube. But even that didn’t work because YouTube became the monopoly.
Social media platforms are a game of becoming monopolies. Even I’m having this cognitive dissonance, right? Should I post on Twitter or should I post on threads? Should I post the same thing in both places? And then when I post same thing in both places, people would be like, Oh, I saw this on Twitter also.
So eventually I’ll have to make one choice and so will many millions of people who are on both these platforms. now, I don’t know which one exactly people are going to choose, but it turns out you will end up choosing not the one with the better features, but the ones that your friends are more likely to choose.

Last Words!

Is it going to be Twitter? Or is it going to be threads. Now, obviously, Elon is not going to sit back and watch Zuck threaten his business. According to Semaphore, he has already made his move by threatening to sue Meta and he’s accusing Meta of poaching former employees to create a copycat application. None of that will work. It is not the features that make the difference. It is the people that are there. Elon seems not to understand network effects as well as he understands rockets or cars, but I’m pretty sure he’ll pick it up over time. and obviously at some point the cage match between Mark and Elon might have happened.
But Elon knows and he’s not going to give Mark the free attention now. But if it does happen, we will report on it.