Social media has become an integral part of our lives. From sharing our daily activities to expressing our thoughts and opinions, social media provides us with a platform to connect with people from all over the world. With the rise of social media, many platforms have emerged, each with its unique features and user base. One such platform that has been making waves is Threads, a direct competitor to Twitter launched by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Zuckerberg says 10 million have joined already.
Last month, Elon Musk responded to Mark Zuckerberg’s move on Twitter, claiming he wanted to have an octagon fight with him. Unexpectedly, just after winning a judo championship, Zuckerberg replied to Musk asking, “Where?” While Musk was relaxing, Zuckerberg hit him with a heavy blow – Meta launched Threads, a direct competitor to Twitter.
Previously, Facebook and Instagram, Meta’s two main social media apps, had maintained a balance with Twitter, each having its own user base and not interfering with each other for over a decade. The appearance of Threads broke this calm.
In short, Threads is a platform highly similar to Twitter in terms of functionality, where users can post text (with a 500 character limit), images, and video content. Since Threads was developed by the Instagram team, you can find a lot of Instagram’s DNA in it, such as the UI being simple, refined, and easy to use.
Upon opening Threads for the first time, you can feel its strong connection with Instagram: you can directly log in to Threads using your Instagram account, and then follow all the accounts you follow on Instagram with just one click, skipping the awkward process of starting from scratch on a new social media app. This seamless migration method has brought Threads a large number of new users in a very short time. Just 7 hours after its launch, Zuckerberg excitedly announced that Threads had surpassed ten million registered users.
On Twitter, when you need multiple tweets to express something, you can link them together to form a continuous timeline for easy content updates. Threads borrow this format, where you can continuously reply to a tweet to form a complete piece of content, hence its name. When other users reply to your “thread,” corresponding “threads” will appear, constantly emphasizing this interactive connection.
On Instagram, likes are the most important form of interaction, while on Threads, the display priority of replies is higher than likes. The development team seems to want to use Threads and the collection of user avatars in replies to attract users to click on Threads posts to see what everyone is discussing. From this detail, it can be seen that Twitter and Threads have some different focuses: the former’s content focus is on what the blogger has posted, while the latter’s content focus is on what topic the blogger has sparked.
Regarding the product form of Threads, Zuckerberg also made some relevant responses. A creator asked Zuckerberg what the difference was between Threads and the Broadcast channel on Instagram. Zuckerberg responded that he would use Instagram’s Broadcast to release product updates, while using Threads to discuss and share his thoughts.
Perhaps in the eyes of the development team, although Threads looks like Twitter, it is actually closer to discussion group communities such as Discord or Reddit. Users who want to escape from Twitter need a new home. The timing of Threads’ launch could not have been more strategic.
Just last week, Musk announced that he would limit the number of tweets that could be read on Twitter: unverified accounts can only see 600 tweets per day, new unverified accounts can only see 300 tweets per day, and verified accounts can only read up to 6,000 tweets per day. Musk’s “limitation” immediately faced strong opposition from Twitter users (Elon Musk Limits Tweet Reading on Twitter to Curb Data Scraping). He later adjusted the limit to a maximum of 10,000 tweets per day for verified users and a maximum of 1,000 tweets per day for unverified users, with new unverified accounts being able to read a maximum of 500 tweets per day.
Musk claimed that this was necessary because hundreds of organizations (including some AI companies) are scraping Twitter data, which is affecting the experience of real users.
Interesting how Threads will evolve and what new features it will bring to the table.
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