Case Study: Competitive analysis of the Threads App user adoption strategy
In my journey as a product designer, I've made quite some research in recent years, to understand that
Competitive innovation and user adoption is a bedrock of product growth and market sustainability.
According to Wealth, a business and technology analysis platform, Twitter rival, Threads has broken the record of fastest time taken for any app to hit one million users in history.
According to this source data, the user growth rates of Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and ChatGpt were all compared.
The data below compares the average times taken by different platforms to attain 1 million users.
- Twitter — 3.5 years
- Netflix — 2 years
- Facebook — 10 months
- Instagram — 2.5 months
- ChatGpt — 5 days
However, Threads, a social networking text-focused messaging app launched by Meta on July 6, 2023, surpassed this milestone in less than 2 hours, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced via his official handle on the platform.
Here I highlighted a few reasons why I think it was possible for the product to achieve what seemed to be an incredible level of user adoption success from its inception.
Funneled data migration
Threads was created as a third-party integration software for Instagram and built from its existing user database — this means that if you already have an Instagram account, you may create a thread version of your account immediately. The current drawback to this is that it relies exclusively on existing data which means that you can only create your Threads account through your Instagram account (at least for the time being). Quite fascinating right?
Intuitive user experience
At this point, Threads worked its magic and predicated on competitive leverage over similar text-based networking sites like Twitter, Reddit, etc. Though more personalized and less chaotic, the Thread user experience reflects the same mental model — perhaps with room for improvements.
When I say that you don’t become bored or lost once you join the platform, I mean. Whoosh!
F.O.M.O (Fear of missing out)
If you look at the tremendous PR and advertising across their other platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, you can see that this had a significant effect for a company the size of Meta. I have no doubt that many folks joined in because their friends did or because someone told them it was the hottest thing online.
PS: When I arrived, there were already a good number of recognised faces there. Amazing!
Ease of user onboarding
So easy and seamless as you would expect — You may import or clone your Instagram account, follow the same Instagram people on the platform, and even those who have yet to join Threads by being on their followers waitlist pending when they join so you can follow them immediately in a matter of seconds.
A no-brainer for increased user acquisition!
Product offering advantage
The truth can’t be far from this, despite the fact that it may sound extremely controversial. Its rivalry with Twitter and recent changes to Twitter — including obtrusive ads, unneeded subscription and verification requirements, and most recently, a limit on the number of tweets users can view in a day, made Threads seem to be introduced at the right time as formidable alternative platform.
People adore the feeling of freedom, and they would rather be there.
Hopefully, we’ll be able to evaluate how this user adoption technique scales competitively over time.
Thanks for reading this far and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this as well. 💭
