Does Threads Have What It Takes to Challenge Twitter(X)? 2023 Social Media Battle

Meta recently launched a new platform called "Threads," derived from Instagram. Within a few days, Threads garnered over a hundred million registered accounts, becoming the fastest-growing consumer app in recent years. Its interface and timing of launch are almost in direct competition with one of today's social media giants, Twitter (now known as X), led by Elon Musk. Who will emerge victorious in this social media battle, and what impact will it have on the current social networking landscape?

On Taiwan's date 7/2(GMT+8), the globally influential social media platform Twitter, now effectively controlled by Elon Musk, suffered a severe disruption to over a billion users due to a bug caused by a new policy. The bug stemmed from Twitter's decision to prohibit non-logged-in users from viewing webpage content. Soon after, many developers and internet workers discovered that this new policy unexpectedly led to a frenzy of Self-DDoS attacks on Twitter.

CEO Elon Musk, apart from repeatedly offering conflicting statements about Twitter being heavily scraped and maliciously DDoS attacked, also urgently announced a restrictive measure that fueled public outrage: temporary limits on user access. Verified accounts could access 6,000 tweets per day, unverified accounts 600 tweets, and newly registered unverified accounts could only browse 300 tweets.

Although the traffic limit issue was temporarily resolved that day, Twitter's recent contentious policies, less-than-ideal responses during emergencies, and Elon Musk's poor public relations responses seem to have pushed a large number of users to the brink of tolerance.
Then, on Taiwan's date 7/6, Meta seized the opportunity and launched Threads, a new platform strikingly similar to Twitter, right in the midst of the controversy.

In addition to seizing the timing when Twitter was facing issues, Threads' major competitive advantage lies in the fact that users must link their new Threads account directly to their Instagram account. Upon opening the Threads account, users can choose to instantly follow all their existing Instagram followers with just one click, greatly reducing the onboarding friction. With the massive user base of Instagram, Threads acquired over a hundred million registered users within five days of launch – an impressive feat in terms of social media platform growth.

However, over the course of two days on 7/11 and 7/12, Threads' daily active user count dropped a significant 20% compared to 7/8. The reasons behind this reduced user engagement and how Threads' platform ecosystem will develop remain to be seen. Here are a few observations:

1. Poor User Experience on the Platform

Threads' interface closely resembles that of Twitter, including features like tweets (referred to as "串文" on Threads), retweets, and more. However, the current major difference – and a significant impact on individual users – is the home page display. A few months ago, Twitter divided the home page into "For You" and "Following" sections. The "For You" page shows tweets from users you don't follow, including activities of users you do follow, such as their likes, follows, or tweets.

Currently, Threads' home page has only one option, and apart from your friends' threads, replies, and follows, it also heavily promotes popular accounts' posts based on your account's IP. This means that upon opening the home page, you'll see a large number of posts from accounts you're not interested in, haven't followed, and even find it difficult to identify whose post it is based solely on the user ID. This is a poor user experience for many casual users.
Furthermore, there are several obvious functional issues. While Meta's other platforms, Facebook and Instagram, have higher homogeneity, this also offers content creators the opportunity to quickly reach a large audience in a short amount of time.

2. Lack of Diverse Functionality and Unclear Positioning

Next, let's discuss one of the most crucial aspects of a social media platform – "platform positioning."
Twitter's distinctive features include interactive tweets, retweets, and replies, where the distinction between authors and responders is not as clear. Facebook, on the other hand, emphasizes interaction between authors and individual responders, although after various interface adjustments, parallel interactions among communities are not as vibrant as before. Instagram further enhances the relationship between authors and individual responders, tightly binding media content like photos or videos. This emphasis intensified with the introduction of Stories and Reels, significantly reducing the prominence of text.

Returning to platform positioning, both Twitter and Meta's other platforms have a relatively rich and thriving ecosystem, catering to a diverse range of interactions including KOLs, creators, official business accounts, and current events. However, Facebook's algorithm adjustments have led to decreased visibility for media posts and external link posts, coupled with frustrations related to speech censorship and account restrictions. As a result, Facebook now primarily hosts advertisements from business accounts and lengthy posts. Instagram, on the other hand, caters to influencers/KOLs, lifestyle sharing, and creators, focusing on more casual community life.

Threads, at present, has only launched a mobile version, with its interface design tailored for reading text-oriented posts. However, the majority of its users are Instagram migrants, whose habits have shifted towards image and short video content due to the influence of both platforms. With conflicting platform ecosystems and usage patterns, compounded by the dual impact of homepage algorithms, as of the writing date (7/18 GMT+8), Threads has yet to establish a clear platform positioning and ecosystem.

For businesses, a successful platform operation ultimately requires advertising revenue. Many e-commerce and brand accounts seek to leverage the momentum to reach a wider audience on Threads. However, in Taiwan, the current user expectation for this new platform is primarily focused on quick, concise, and text-based life sharing. Preferences for commercial posts lean towards friendly and engaging interactions, particularly in the form of approachable and interesting community managers. Therefore, if business advertisers replicate the operation model from Instagram without adaptation, they may risk evoking negative reactions from the general user base.

With Threads having been online for almost two weeks, many regulations and the platform's future development remain uncertain. If Threads manages to stabilize and grow, it will naturally foster its own ecosystem and user base. After all, despite modern society's heavy reliance on social media, managing a new platform is a significant burden. Moreover, casual users are unlikely to embrace two or more highly homogeneous social software applications.

Regarding the future migration of users once Threads' community development matures, whether from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, or elsewhere, it will depend on Meta's subsequent feature updates, the positioning they grant to Threads, and the value they provide. For general users, having one more choice for expressing emotions and sharing life experiences is undoubtedly a positive development. As for hardworking community managers, creators, and marketing editors, they need to diligently study and analyze this rapidly evolving digital realm, striving to remain grounded amidst each wave of updates.

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