Meta launched its Twitter clone to great acclaim. If you’d like to skip to our Threads sign up tutorial, it can be found at the bottom of this post.
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is a $750 billion social media behemoth. Originally founded in 2004, Meta has used acquisitions to fuel its growth and stay relevant. While millions of users no longer use the original Facebook social network, acquisitions like Instagram and Whatsapp usage power Meta’s growth.
However, Meta faces increased regulatory scrutiny, which makes future acquisitions much more difficult to get government approval. Instead, Meta turned to its second most successful product tactic, copying.
Meta has a long history of copying features from competitors (most notably IG Stories from Snapchat). Threads is their latest copycat product, but this time it feels much different than other product attempts. This feels like it could transform the Meta business.
The Origins of a Twitter Clone
Initial Threads Thoughts - The Feed
How to Get Started with Threads
While Facebook was an early social network, Twitter’s emergence really kicked off what we called the social web. Between 2008 - 2013 was a special time on the web, where apps like Instagram and Twitter originated and complemented still nascent social apps like Facebook and YouTube.
The world was just learning what social feeds were, the concept of following strangers online, and what “real-time” information meant. This is where Twitter found its niche, offering an online “townsquare” where millions of people could voice their opinions and share breaking news before traditional media could vet the information.
The history of Twitter has always been tumultuous, as evident by their carousel of CEOs. This all culminated in the takeover in the fall of 2022 by Elon Musk, who would take the company private.
In his roughly nine months of ownership, he has slashed headcount, charged for verification (which Instagram also copied), and made numerous product changes in a short amount of time. But when he announced that he would limit the number of tweets a user can read on a daily basis, it caused such a ruckus, it’s rumored to have caused Meta to push live their Twitter clone, Threads early.
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On July 5th, 2023 Meta launched Threads as a standalone app. Within the first two hours, the app had 2 million sign ups. By four hours, the app had 5 million sign ups and 10 million sign ups after seven hours. It currently has approximately 70+ million downloads. Since Twitter’s inception, the entire app has had 450 million downloads.
Despite its rushed debut and lacking many basic features (hashtags being an obvious one, chronological feed another), Threads offers a clean but familiar design. You can Repost (aka Retweet) or Quote (Quote Tweet). It’s wild to think this is an MVP, debuted to 100 million users.
Based on public threads from Threads top two bosses (Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO and Adam Mosseri, Head of IG), Threads is looking to build a different type of community. One that’s kinder.
Instagram boss Adam Mosseri posted on Threads that“...it’s less about text versus photos and videos and more about what public conversation you want to have.”
While Zuckerberg affirmingly commented on a thread that categorized Thread’s goal to “be real and be kind.”
Anecdotally, I was a relatively heavy Twitter user. Based on my last three weeks of usage, I spend an average of 60 minutes on Twitter a week. But the experience has de-evolved and I was ready for change, but was not thrilled with the alternatives (aka Mastedon/BlueSky). Since Threads' short arrival, my Twitter usage is down to 8 minutes.
The joy of a new social app is acclimating to your new feed. Do you want to follow all the same people (following Instagram connections is easy) or do you want to find new people to follow?
Who I follow on Twitter has always been different from Instagram. Twitter was always for strangers in my industry while Instagram was for my close friends. I’m still figuring out what to do with Threads, but for now I’m following a mix of friends and interesting strangers.
The lack of a chronological feed is a bit disorienting right now. I don’t feel like there is any particular rhythm or reason to my feed. I also don’t follow a ton of people yet, so my social graph is not robust. It’s quite dominated by threads that Zuckerberg and Mosseri interact with, but I supposed that will go away once greater scale and engagement are achieved. Perhaps the biggest gap in the feed is recommendations.
Twitter has become very good recommending me tweets of people who are similar to the types of tweets I interact with. While I don’t love all of the people or tweets, it keeps my feed interesting. Especially since Twitter has split the feed into the algorithmic feed and the following feed. But with Threads, I don’t quite have that yet, so I run out of content to view very quickly.
One annoying, but not insurmountable, issue I see with tying these two accounts together is the username/identity issue. My feed is filled with respectable journalists who chose a random Instagram username years ago, which was fine with their friends, but looks really odd when it comes to a platform that might be used for more professional reasons. I’m sure it’s in the long roadmap of fixes to come.
I know it’s early and I’m eager to see where Threads goes from here.
Signing up for Threads is insanely easy, due to the integration with Instagram.
One thing to note about Threads is that you cannot create an account with Threads alone. You need to use your Instagram account to link and use it.
Threads marks an exciting chapter on the social web. It’s the first new social app we’ve had in years. It’s the first real competitor to Twitter and an opportunity for millions of people worldwide to start fresh. While TikTok might be too GenZ for many people, Threads could be a better opportunity for GenZ all the way to older millennials to co-exist online. Find me on Threads @jessebouman or on Instagram to keep up with my thoughts and daily life.
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