Thoughts on Threads after a week? Here’s my review.
According to various reports, Threads, Meta/Instagram’s Twitter killer, is off to a solid start. By the time you read this, it’s projected that around 110 million accounts have been created. Not bad for less than a week, considering that the latest figures I can find on Twitter (2022) is that it has 450 million monthly users (240 million monetizable users, according to Elon.) This growth is even faster than what we saw with ChatCPT earlier this year.
All the above numbers are sketchy, of course, because we don’t know how many are bots or multiple accounts held by one person. Still, Mark Zuckerberg has to be happy with the trajectory. I’ve managed to attract around 2,200 followers, which is far below the 70,000 or so I have on Twitter. But hey, it’s only been a week.
I’ve been playing around with things and here are some thoughts on the new platform.
- A post can be as long as 500 characters. That’s more than enough for a microblogging service.
- Clean interface. It’s easy to use.
- Many of the people/organizations I follow on Twitter are also on Threads.
- No ads. There won’t be, says Meta, until there’s around a billion users.
- The level of discourse (so far) has been less troll-ish than Twitter. At least in my feed. That can’t last, of course. The extreme, unnuanced, inflexible crazies will be along shortly.
- No, wait. They’re here. How will Meta managed misinformation? What’s that? They don’t plan to?
- You can’t delete your Threads account without deleting your Instagram account. Meta no doubt considers that a feature. I call it a bug.
- There’s still no way to track trending topics with hashtagging and topic searches.
- No DMs. Bad.
- No desktop version. Bad.
- No API integration with websites. For example, when I publish this post, it’ll be automatically be pushed to Twitter and Facebook but not Threads. Bad.
- Yes, this is further fragmentation of social media, which dilutes the whole experience and power.
- And you have to wonder how many people have signed up for Threads just because they hate what Twitter has become.
Look, it’s only been a week. Meta has plenty of money and engineers. Twitter wasn’t built in a day, either. Meanwhile, if you’re on threads and want to throw me a follow bone, I’m @alan_crossx.
Currently not in the EU, partially due to privacy concerns, partially because Meta doesn’t know how the new antitrust law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) which could stop any chance that Meta makes money from data mining all of people’s personal info (as they do now).
Since Meta is TERRIBLE about privacy and privacy laws, I think that I will be staying away. I have already purged anything that they own, and although Google is just as evil, I rather have one evil than multiple evils.
A quote from the Washington Post about it.
“As of Thursday, the new app — which combines a cornucopia of personal information for advertisers about people’s health, shopping habits, location and other unspecified “sensitive” data — wasn’t available in France, Germany, Italy or Belgium. Down the line, Zuckerberg may be forced to give the residents of those countries a choice on whether they want their data processed for the purposes of advertising. If they say no, that could hurt Meta financially. ”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/06/twitter-vs-threads-eu-strikes-at-the-heart-of-meta-s-money-machine/74a8e69c-1c21-11ee-be41-a036f4b098ec_story.html