The world of social media forever changed its course in April 2022 when Elon Musk initiated an acquisition of X (formerly Twitter) for a highly overinflated sum of $44 Billion. He then later tried to back away from the deal but ultimately was cornered into buying the American social media giant or facing a lengthy and expensive court process. Elon eventually took over as CEO and began a complete rehaul of the company, from firing most of its employees to changing the very fabric of the Twitter app, changing the name, and also letting the app descend into the wild west of social media apps by way of freedom of speech.
In the meantime, we have another social media giant, Meta (formerly Facebook) lurking in the background, waiting to seize any opportunity it has to enter the space. Finally, in July 2023, Threads launched and garnered a huge success, signing up 100 million new users within the first week. Since then, the drama has only intensified between the two billionaires, with a plan for a cage match gaining momentum on social media, paralleling their rivalry on their real-life competition.
So let’s cut to the chase. Can Threads steamroll through Twitter’s space and overtake it anytime soon? To understand that, let’s dive into what made Twitter Twitter!
According to Techopedia, Twitter is a social networking and microblogging online service that allows users to send and receive text-based messages or posts of up to 280 characters called “tweets.” What made Twitter unique was its ability to create a strong, large, and tightly knit community of users who could have real-time conversations and keep up with the happenings of the world as it unfolded. Also, the character limit helped people condense a large amount of information and made it easier to keep up with multiple events at once. Through user innovation, Twitter created hashtags, the famous replying @ symbol, and much more. Now on to the controversies, Twitter had a rampant bot problem which meant scams, hate speech, and fake news infested the site. Research was done in 2020 which suggested that 15% of current users were bots and not real people. So keeping all things in consideration, let us see if Threads can hold a candle to Twitter.
Let’s be honest, Threads is a Twitter copycat. Having been hyped up initially as the Twitter killer, and having amassed a huge following early on, it was on track to be the social media app of the century, except for the fact that it never materialized. Firstly, let’s begin with the numbers. Although Threads got 100 million signups in a week, we have to take this number with a pinch of salt. The 100 million users that came on board were already Facebook/Instagram users who were heavily encouraged to join the new platform. Secondly, Threads has no soul. Twitter got to the place it is at with genuine community building, whereas Threads misses all the major functionality that made Twitter Twitter, for example, they copy-pasted their Instagram template of Suggested Posts, which is easily one of the most annoying features of Instagram. That coupled with the fact that Threads could not replicate the real-time world affairs feature meant that the app was just a shell pretending to have life in it. Add the fact that you can never delete your Threads account and you can see where my skepticism originates.
So there we have it, in my personal opinion, think Threads is a long way off from overtaking Twitter, but over due course, if they manage to find a niche/unique opportunity, they could succeed with the help of some of the billion odd Facebook users that exist.
