With a staggering thirty million users already signed up to Meta’s Threads app on its launch day, could this spell doom for the recently controversial Twitter?
Zuckerberg has been busy in recent days launching Threads, something he describes as being a “friendly” rival, and a much-needed alternative, to Twitter. Many are touting that Threads could become the social media home to many Twitter users who have become unhappy in recent times due to the many changes pushed through since Musk’s takeover in April 2022. Despite this, Twitter seems to be shrugging off remarks of its downfall, with Twitter CEO, Linda Yaccarino, suggesting how despite Twitter being “often imitated,” its community can “never be duplicated” on another platform.
Threads contains many features that Twitter users have been screaming out for, for years now, whilst also maintaining the fundamentals of its rival. For example, as it stands, Twitter only allows its users to post with a character limit of 280, with many having to create strings for longer messages or use third-party applications like TwitLonger. Meanwhile, Threads has pushed the limit to 500 characters, reducing the frequency of such irritations.
For Zuckerberg, he strongly feels that pursuing a friendly environment on the platform will “ultimately be the key to its success.” However, Musk swiftly struck back, remarking: “It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram.”
Many are touting Threads as a much-needed competitor to Twitter, something that can threaten the platform and push for innovation and improvement in the sector as a whole.
“Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully, we will,” says Zuckerberg. He continues: “It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it.”
However, not everything is as peachy as the face value might seem, and the new app has come under flak for some concerns and practices. Firstly, competitors have criticised the sheer amount of data the app makes use of. This includes health, financial, and browsing data all linked to a user’s identity – something that seems quite intrusive for a simple ‘conversational app.’
There have also been concerns surrounding account deactivation and deletion, something Meta has said: “they are working on.” Due to the nature of an Instagram account needing to be associated with a Threads account, there is currently no method to delete a Threads account without simultaneously doing the same to the associated Instagram account. However, you can deactivate the account, which removes the profile, posts, and interactions from view.
With all this said, will Threads become the next Twitter, or perhaps a rival, or will it be a fad that expires in the coming months as the hype dies down? Only time will tell.
