Needle and Threads
It’s no secret that Meta has created an app very similar to X (formerly Twitter), in order to continue competing on the charts to become the top social platforms of this generation. But how’s it really doing? What can it do for a business at this time? Let’s find out.
In terms of being user-friendly, Threads is actually a pretty simple interface for those familiar with other social media apps. Obviously every new app will have some getting used to, but there are some similarities between X and Threads – There are also some very relevant differences. Some of the biggest ones include the character count, video length allowed in posts, and hashtags.
Threads does not have ads (yet) and they just launched their desktop platform, but the possibilities for them to grow are really unlimited at this time. While they will get a lot of ideas from X, like post views, there are still things they can bring to the table that we haven’t yet seen.
One big setting Threads introduced to users recently was the ability to control who quotes your posts. This goes a long way in privacy, or securing what you want to see in your feed, etc. Users can also hide replies (for all users), mute certain words, and mute certain notifications. Doing this allows each user to have a more personal interaction with the app. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, wants to push for a conversational app with more positive experiences, which we all know is not the current goal of Elon Musk with X.
Let’s talk about lingo on Threads. It’s nothing like what Twitter used to be with tweets, re-tweets, etc. They have threads, replies, posts, and quotes. Pretty simple! The ‘Threads Dictionary’ could evolve with more users and more time, like why wouldn’t we call quotes ‘re-threading’ or ‘stitching’ – Come on, it’s right there for us!
If we look at the US market for both apps, Business Insider has reported, “So far in April, Threads has averaged an estimated 28 million daily active users, so people who have opened the app at least once in a 24-hour period […] X has averaged 22 million DAUs, a usage rate that’s 21% lower than Threads.”
While they’re beating X in daily users, they have at least 400 million monthly active users to even dethrone X, sitting at 550 million. Leadership for threads believes Threads could become the next billion-user platform – We’ll see.
This is a fun venture to try for those looking to expand onto new platforms. In terms of business capabilities, there’s not much to do besides continue building your brand. It’s the same thing with X, unless you have a pretty established name or are willing to put money behind ads (which Threads doesn’t even have), it’s not worth putting a ton of time into it, unless you want to do it for fun?