Since the arrival of Elon Musk’s Twitter, the platform has seen a steady decline in sales and users. After firing all of their staff, launching erratic content moderation policies and the sale of blue ticks, which took any form of credibility out of the platform, everything that made Twitter unique was stripped away. This gave rise to the advent of the Twitter clones because a once powerful place to engage in public conversations about things that mattered had fallen to ashes, and the meat was up for grabs.
Although Zuck’s copy is missing a few key features, it is still an acceptable alternative to a once-important platform for political and other discussion. What’s important to note here is the power in the hands of one company for users of Threads, Instagram and Whatsapp, considering the plethora of private or sensitive information they most definitely possess on you. Former CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey has also come up with his version of Twitter named Bluesky, which is currently available to download on the app store as an invite-only application which means it may be available for public use soon.
Threads Popularity
Instagram’s new Threads app has already surpassed 100 million users, reaching the milestone dramatically faster than even ChatGPT. OpenAI’s chatbot passed the mark after two months, but Threads, which only launched on Wednesday, got there in a matter of days. The number of users can be found in the Instagram app, which tracks the size of the Threads user base.
As we know that the application looks suspiciously similar to Twitter, Elon has understandably showcased anger and frustration at the fact and announced that he will do everything in his power to protect their intellectual property and trade secrets.
The Problem With Threads
Despite people posting and joining various groups, fear that it will only be a space that protects the interests of brands that have joined and that no viable or essential discussion will ever take place on a platform that doesn’t have a chronologically framed feed and randomly showcases content from all across the platform instead of just the people you follow. Also, people use different social media platforms for different purposes, and porting the entire follower list from Instagram to Threads might not be the best for people who don’t want to share every asinine thought they have ever had with their friends in real life.
Some Threads users were also put off by an issue that may require them to delete their connected Instagram account if they wish to delete their Threads account. Instagram said it was looking into alternate ways that Threads users can deactivate their accounts.
Although the initial hype might just be enough to help it sustain for a while as it rides its popularity wave in the long term Meta will definitely have to make the app more user-friendly and add more features. It also considerably falls behind Twitters’s 237 million active users daily who still diligently use the platform. Although some people accept the puritanical content moderation laws that have been put up, others seem to think the app is doomed since you can’t engage in the no holds barred public sphere conversation; that is why people choose to be on platforms like Twitter.
The best critiques of Threads are in TechCrunch and Slate.
The Future Going Forward
Suppose Meta wants to reach its 1 billion users goal. In that case, it’s going to have to figure out how to get around EU regulations that have strict laws against monopoly by one company and don’t want to let one big company gatekeep the entire social media sphere and discourage other companies from building a presence in an industry ruled by one man.
