The story so far: In July 2023, the Instagram-based app Threads exploded with an outpouring of enthusiasm from users desperate to escape Elon Musk’s X, the app formerly known as Twitter. That subsided in the first few months as the number of daily active users (DAUs) halved. Still, Team Threads worked diligently to add many of the features a disgruntled Twitter user could want — a web version, a reverse-chronological timeline — while Musk seemed to be doing his best to improve his own service.
“Don’t be surprised if Threads becomes this “Point of contact for all trends until the end of 2023,” I wrote in August. That was a risky prediction. Musk himself has made fun of it, and this guy knows a thing or two about the lack of predictions.
Here’s what we learned this month: “Threads DAUs in the US exceeded X in December 2023 and it hasn’t looked back,” according to Apptopia, a company that tracks app usage. Had my prediction right under the wire come true? Not quite, because the picture is a bit more complicated:
What cannot be denied: it’s spring for threads. After the August plunge, millions of users returned. In April’s Meta earnings report, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced 150 million threads MAUs, a 50% increase from the July peak and 30 million more than February. In contrast to other Twitter alternatives, Zuck’s service is causing a stir among users in the media: “Is Threads the good place?” The New York Times the opinion site asked itself in March.
Meanwhile, Musk’s service has devolved into a shabby, bot-filled soup of misinformation and boring promoted comments from pay-to-play accounts with “blue ticks.” Advertisers have fled because their content appears on Nazi accounts restored by Musk, while such misleading low-rent ads have never been seen on the timelines of regular users who refuse to pay. It doesn’t work. Usage is declining, even by Musk’s own admission; Other unbiased reports suggest usage has fallen by a quarter since he took office. And the patient continues to bleed.
The tweet may have been deleted
Equally undeniable: Threads isn’t quite there yet, at least for partially reformed Twitter addicts like me.
On the surface, it’s actually the Good Place – a kind of heaven for some of the greatest accounts you might know from the 2010s, when Twitter was at its peak. And it’s easier to share your results with friends: iPhones now recognize threads links, so funny memes or clever cats can appear directly in messages without having to click through.
However, that doesn’t mean the content itself is equally shareable. Look at both X and Threads this past weekend, and there was no question which had the most viral activity. Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota, tried Explain the whole puppy shooting thing on Twitter. If you wanted to tell the governor what a monster she was, you had to go there: the Bad Place.
In the social media giant’s Schadenfreude section, Derek Guy, known as the men’s fashion guy, dissected a tasteless influencer who thought he dressed like Cary Grant, highlighting their style differences Dozens of expert-tailored tweets. Guy now posts in threads – but only ten times in the entire month of April. He deconstructed his target on Twitter, because that’s still the place to fight verbal battles in front of friends and enemies.
Destructible speed of light
At a time when we are working more and more in isolation, Twitter is still the arena where all sides meet. Only over.
Drop the algorithm, Zuck
Why isn’t Threads the must-have conversation arena? The answer partly has to do with Zuckerberg’s strange shyness when it comes to putting news front and center. But there is something else. The longer a Twitter veteran spends on threads, the more they notice what might be called major meta energy—and that’s not a good thing.
“The replies here feel a lot more like Facebook comments than Twitter replies,” one user wrote this weekend, responding to another who complained about all the overly serious replies she was getting to half-baked thoughts in threads . “Every time I post an idle thought or complaint, I’m flooded with a ton of accounts I’ve never interacted with trying to give me unsolicited advice or tell me it’s all my own fault. “
A former colleague and social media veteran agreed in somewhat harsher terms: “Threads users could use understanding the concept of shitposting,” she wrote. “I swear the majority of Threads users were just using the regular internet and it shows.”
There’s something wrong with the atmosphere of conversation on Twitter, but why? In short, and a little more politely, too many Threads users come straight from Instagram and are unwittingly relying on the meta algorithm to choose which threads to read – regardless of whether they actually follow the accounts that post them . You may know it better as the “For You” tab.
Or maybe you don’t know it, because the current design of the Threads app on your phone hides the fact that you can toggle “Following,” the classic reverse-chronological timeline that made Twitter the creative whirlwind it was a must read at the climax of his story. What you need to know is that you need to tap on the logo at the top of the page to see For You and Follow Me. And the damn app defaults to “For You” every time you open it. No wonder the author of it Just The piece didn’t even seem to know there was another option.
Algorithms control your online life. How to reduce their influence.
Maybe Musk pushes the dial more heavily than Zuck on his “For You” option, an algorithm that often seems to center Musk’s favorite accounts — but at least on Musk’s iPhone app, you can still choose “For You” and “For You ” see. By default, Follow is enabled.
It’s not a hasty judgment to say that Zuck wants to center the algorithm in threads. This is the Facebook playbook: let the algorithm grow up and take control, let it learn the ways we like to engage and outrage, let it be (or seem like) the only option. For six years, the algorithmic option replaced the chronological option on Instagram, becoming a tangle of ads and posts from “suggested accounts.” Instagram restored the Follow option in 2022 – but again, you don’t know if you don’t tap the logo.
If Threads becomes just another bloated, boring wasteland of provocative content from accounts you don’t even want to follow, Threads will just be Instagram with fewer images. It will never capture the elusive energy of peak Twitter. Creative Twitter types will simply give up on producing the constant stream of content that made the service so compelling.
Musk will remain in control of the social media arena even if it collapses like the Coliseum. To choose another Roman metaphor for these unfortunate gladiators: It’s time to see if at least one of Zuck’s apps can cross the Rubicon and venture into the risky territory of reverse-chronological news. If he can focus on following, it will lead to a lasting increase in users.
This column reflects the opinion of the author.