Time to write Twitters obituary?

A serious competitor enters the field for the first time. Can it Thread the needle?

Elon Musk’s controversial take over of Twitter in October 2022 was not the disaster that many predicted, but the experience of many using Twitter in a professional capacity is that many of the benefits have significantly eroded, and the negatives have increased substantially.

I can’t speak to Mr Musk’s intentions or motives, but I struggle to think of a single initiative he has introduced that hasn’t made the platform worse. Many people also found his personal actions or behaviour on the platform reprehensible.

It has mainly been personal offense taken towards Elon Musk which spawned a large number of performative Twitter exodus events over the past 8 months, each time to a seemingly new competitor. Each of these events were a total flop, and Twitter ploughed on regardless with the power of its scale and audience capture behind it.

That may have changed. Threads is the new Twitter rip off (let’s be honest) backed by Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. It has secured over 50 million users in its first 24 hours - 10% of the estimated active user-base of Twitter.

Here are my preliminary thoughts from the initial sign up.

Usability vs Experience

Threads works almost exactly the same as Twitter in principle, but is lacking many features. There are no hashtags to follow topics you’re interested in. You cannot send direct messages. There is no chronological timeline or way to only see posts by people you follow. It doesn’t even have a desktop interface - you have to use it on your phone. All of these things are painfully annoying, however many of these abilities are apparently on the way. Timing will be critical, as these things are a deal breaker for most people who want to use Threads as a professional rather than personal tool (not having it on desktop is a killer for me).

As it’s new, it hasn’t had time or experience to build good algorithms to show you what you actually like, so everyone’s timelines are just filled with Instagram influencers who brought their huge following with them (you need an Instagram account to even sign up to Threads¹). The timeline is mainly just garbage for now.

The general experience there however is currently much more pleasant, for a number of reasons. There are no adverts. Apparently there are not even plans to introduce adverts until there are at least 1 billion users (double Twitters current number). Given at some points my Twitter timeline became almost 20% paid adverts, this is an enormous advantage.

There is much less aggression. Perhaps the least obvious reason why is most people have far fewer followers on Threads than they did on Twitter, meaning they will attract fewer ne’er-do-wells. There are also fewer users generally, so there will be fewer ne’er-do-wells, as there is less incentive for them to sign up. That will obviously change with time, but it remains to be seen to what extent they rival Twitters level of trolling.

Compared to other Twitter exodus events which for the most part mainly involved people with very strong opinions and of a particular political proclivity, Threads seems to have enjoyed sign ups from a large share of some of the most sane and reasonable people I interacted with on Twitter. This exodus has a very different feel.

Personally, my hope is also that some accounts that gained notoriety during Covid-19 for their extreme opinions will no longer be able to cultivate such following and influence now interest in the topic has so drastically waned. This was a key part of the scientific discourse becoming to toxic, and the toxicity is spilling over into other areas of science too.

The pudding

The proof will be in 3 things:

1. Can the usability issues be resolved quickly (which will impact…)

2. Will uptake be good enough to truly rival Twitters scale advantage and audience capture - specifically, can it attract journalists, politicians and professionals, the key demographics which gave Twitter its influence and made it attractive

3. If it reaches scale, how well will moderation and algorithms perform in disincentivising malicious behaviour and misinformation

The last step is perhaps the most tricky, and indeed where Elon Musk sunk his own ship. Tackling misinformation online is difficult, and censorship is a last resort. In my opinion it does have a place for organised, funded, harmful misinformation, such as many anti-vaccine campaigns (e.g. the so called, “disinformation dozen”). Well funded moderators checking for harassment will be key, which hopefully Meta will be able to sufficiently fund and staff.

In regards to size, even if it doesn’t quite reach the scale of Twitter it can still succeed. Being slightly smaller might even be a boon, as it will reduce the amount of trolling (there is less incentive to troll if you are getting less attention). The key is to reach a critical mass of engaged, high value and influential users to keep a dynamic network alive. I know that sounds like gross management jargon, but engagement (actually using it), value (people bringing content worth being on the platform for) and influence (people who engage with your content being able to do something meaningful with it) are the things which made Twitter great.

Summary

The increasing hostile, ad filled timelines and difficulty finding trustworthy, timely and relevant information have hugely damaged Twitters value. Threads is the first real competitor capable of capturing enough relevant audience to become a rival environment. Usability needs to be fixed fast - especially desktop use and a chronological timeline only of people you follow. If this happens, it has a real chance of scaling and becoming more like Twitter felt 5 - 10 years ago. A safer space for professionals to discover and discuss cutting edge developments in their fields, and to follow world events from trusted sources in near-enough real time.

I for one am giving it a chance.

1. Some people have been put off by the fact that you need to link an Instagram account to a Threads account to open it, and that to delete the Threads account you would need to delete your Instagram account. My advice is simply to create a new Instagram account specifically to link to Threads. If you ever need to delete Threads, no need then to delete your pre-existing Instagram account. Voila.