Threads Is An Overnight Success — Now What?
Some quick follow-up notes on the prospects of Meta’s “Twitter Killer”
Even though Thread is just over a week old, it sure has stirred quite a storm in social media. Following my article last week analyzing the broader context in which Meta launched its text-focused social networking app, this week, we’re following up on the sludge of developments that have happened since last Friday, while accessing what they mean for the short-term future of social media marketing.
On Monday, Instagram’s top boss Adam Mosseri confirmed that Threads has surpassed 100 million sign-ups in just five days since its public launch, making it the fastest-growing consumer product ever. Some obvious factors contributing to Threads’ runaway success include its frictionless onboarding via Instagram accounts, its user-friendly cross-posting tool that helped pollinate content from Threads to Instagram, and its TikTok-like algorithmic feed that ensure new users get to see some relevant content without having to build out a follower graph first. One less cited factor is the fact that most people are tired of Elon Musk’s hijinks and ready to leave Twitter’s increasingly toxic environment behind.
But, as the saying goes, “Winning is easy; governing is harder.” Now that Threads have quickly established itself as a Twitter alternative with a sizable (and growing) user base, now the challenge shifts to keeping those users engaged on Threads while the company figures out how to make money off it.
A Starting Point to Monetization
With the huge momentum in user adoption right out of the gate, and Meta pledging to keep Threads a brand-safe platform, of course brands and marketers are already getting on Threads, even though the platform has yet to add support for any ad product from the extensive Meta Business Suite.
Ad Age reports that Meta representatives are talking with ad agencies and brands, some of which, like Netflix and Wendy’s, already have organically gained many followers on Threads. Meanwhile, some EU-based Instagram users, including football clubs and media companies, have started posting on Threads as well, despite Meta has yet to launch the platform in the region due to ongoing regulatory negotiations.
On Tuesday, Axios got the scoop that Instagram is planning to bring its branded content tools, which allow companies and creators to add paid partnership labels to their posts, to Threads soon before integrating with Meta’s ad products. These tools should give marketers a way to try out paid promotion on the app while conventional advertising is still off limits. And since Meta is applying Instagram’s rules around sponsored content to Threads, brands that work with influencers to post sponsored content will most likely be required to use these tools on Threads too.
This is obviously meant to be a quick fix to get monetization started Threads. As a platform with an algorithmic feed — and it’s the only feed right now — Threads will ultimately live and die by the quality of its content, so it absolutely needs to convince content creators that this is a social platform that’s worth investing in. Quickly adding the tools that allow creators to work with brands to get some sponsored content onto the feed organically is certainly a low-hanging fruit and the right thing to prioritize first.
Looking ahead, incorporating Meta’s extensive ad products and its one-stop self-serving ad platforms should be the obvious next step for Threads. However, as Axios pointed out, simply transporting the ad products from Instagram to Threads may not work perfectly, for it is unclear what types of ad formats would be the best fit for the burgeoning platform.
Twitter migrants might appreciate pithy observations and humorous one-liners, but ad-copies are rarely emphasized in Instagram ads where eye-grabbing visuals usually do most of the talking. Meanwhile, the type of direct-response ads and performance-based advertising that Meta excels at has not worked particularly well on Twitter, partially because Twitter does not have the type of targeting capabilities that Meta has. Threads could obviously benefit from those same targeting and audience segmentation tools, but Meta will also need to adapt to what the audiences on Threads end up responding to. After all, if Threads is meant to be a “Twitter Killer,” then Meta would be wise not to turn it into another Instagram.
The Longevity Questions
Intertwined with the questions around how Meta will monetize Threads is the open question about the longevity of the platform. Plenty of alternative social platforms have popped up in recent years, such as Gas, Hive Social, and BeReal, but none of them seems to have much staying power. Will Threads be able to keep users engaged in the long run to stay culturally relevant and, more importantly, monetizable? Among the skeptics, Mike Isaac from the New York Times elucidated the uncertainty around Threads’ long-term prospects:
If tech history is any guide, size and scale are solid footholds — but ultimately can only go so far. What comes next is much harder. Mr. Zuckerberg needs people to be able to find friends and influencers on Threads in the serendipitous and sometimes weird ways that Twitter managed to accomplish. He needs to make sure Threads isn’t filled with spam and grifters. He needs people to be patient about app updates that are in the works. In short, he needs users to find Threads compelling enough to keep coming back.
The latest report suggests that engagement on Threads has cratered a bit: Time spent on the app dropped over 50% from 20 minutes on July 7 to 8 minutes on Monday, citing data from Similarweb.
Last week, following Threads’ launch, investor and analyst Eugene Wei published an insightful blog post in which he laid out how Twitter has unwittingly degraded the user experience for its niche but dedicated user base, mainly by replacing its famously chronological timeline with a TikTok-like algorithmic feed, on top of an ill-conceived pay-to-play model that Elon Musk pushed in recent months in hope to drum up some revenues from paid subscriptions.
In comparison, Threads is starting on an algorithmic feed to begin with, which, as I mentioned above, greatly contributed to the seamless onboarding of new users. However, as long as TikTok doesn’t get banned in the U.S., Threads would be effectively in direct competition with the popular short-form video app, whose “For You” feed algorithm is certifiably great at serving up relevant content to users no matter their cultural backgrounds or languages. Even if Threads’ algorithm turns out to be just as good, there is an open question about whether Threads’ mostly text-based content can really compete with TikTok’s full-screen short videos in terms of user engagement.
Then, of course, there is also the lingering question about how Meta plans to adopt the ActivityPub protocol for Threads, and how that would impact its user experience and monetization. In his illuminating piece for The New Stack, Richard MacManus explained how ActivityPub aligns with Meta’s monetization goals for Threads, and pointed out some technical and social challenges that Meta may face in bringing Threads into the fediverse of decentralized social networks, concluding that perhaps “the biggest challenge integrating with fediverse apps like Mastodon will be the cultural differences between the two communities.”
If Threads can overcome these challenges and successfully integrate into the fediverse, then it would certainly be a bonus for its users and ensure its relevance in the long-run as an ad-supported, user-friendly interface for accessing all the brand-safe content in the fediverse networks. However, reconciling cultural differences is never that easy, and Meta certainly has their work cut out for them.
Twitter’s Responses
Lastly, the long-term prospects of Threads also hinges on how Twitter reacts. Some may hope that the arrival of Threads could be a wake up call for the blue bird app, and, to its credits, the company did do two productive things in response.
First, on Saturday, Twitter quietly reinstated the older, and much better, version of TweetDeck, while seemingly restoring legacy API access for third-party apps that it previously cut off, so that users can access Twitter content from some of the popular third-party Twitter clients again. Second, Twitter also started paying more creators on its platform. TechCrunch reports that it is now paying Twitter Blue creators who earned 5 million impressions per month for three months a revenue cut from the ads beside the replies to their tweets.
Unfortunately, these productive moves alone may not be enough to offset the hijinks of its billionaire owner.
In the mere days since Threads took off, Elon Musk has threatened to sue Meta for allegedly coping Twitter and engaging in “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets,” publicly insulted Mark Zuckerberg with a term popular among white supremacists, while also challenging Zuckerberg to, I kid you not, “a literal dick-measuring contest” in a follow-up tweet. As if to distract the public from all the bad press about Twitter’s tanking traffic and his own deranged tweets, Musk announced out of the blue on Wednesday that he’s forming an AI startup called xAI, with a vague goal of ““understand the true nature of the universe.” People were quick to point out that the company seems to be staffed with only men, which plays into the longstanding issue of gender disparity in tech, and especially AI development.
So does this mean Twitter is officially over? Perhaps not quite. Analyst Ben Thompson laid out the case in a recent Stratechery post that, for Twitter to survive this Threads-induced existential crisis, its best defense may be to go back to the basics of what it does best — breaking news and real-time reactions to live events. Echoing Eugene Wei’s argument that I cited earlier on Twitter’s user experience issue, Thompson believes that Twitter’s best bet right now is to simply refocus on news and reactions from people users follow, leaving user growth and the business of scale via an algorithmic feed to Threads. It will end up with a smaller user base, but that niche user base will still drive a lot of cultural discourses that will keep Twitter relevant.
Of course, brands will play a crucial part in the battle of Threads vs. Twitter as well. If Threads fulfills its promise as a brand-safe gateway into the fediverse, then most brands would have little reason to allocate social marketing budget for Twitter, especially if Musk still can’t stop dragging the platform into more controversies that alienate brands and advertisers. But if Twitter could regroup and focus on being the destination for real-time reactions and memes, perhaps there will still be a place for certain brands on Twitter.
