Are you thready? Sorry, we had to.
Amidst the recent controversy with Twitter, after Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform and his limitations to the viability of tweets that also hampered advertisers’ reach, comes Meta’s response seeking to capitalise on all that by introducing the much-anticipated Threads.
Threads is a simple text-based application that allows users to compose messages and share them in real-time as conversation starters. Its comparisons to Twitter have been ongoing for a while now, due to their similarities in the way users engage and interact with each other within the app in a common thread space.
However, one distinct difference that Meta seeks to utilise to its favour is the fact that users do not need to start from scratch with creating an account and stacking their following. Instead, Meta is simply expanding its digital ecosystem by allowing users to interconnect with their Instagram accounts, keep their username and follow the same accounts. So, there’s the advantage of starting with a familiar following and simply continuing to build on an already generative foundation.
The transition to Threads is so seamless and almost a no-brainer at this point, since by leveraging Instagram’s user base, it takes away any hassle that may have preoccupied users with having to deal with another social media app. Will it meet its hype? That remains to be seen, but Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, has already confirmed that the app has 30 million active users in under 24 hours. Pretty bonkers.
Threads allows up to 500 characters and user interaction is the pretty standard process of likes, replies and reposts, including photos, videos and links. While there still has not been any mention of monetisation of ads, there’s space for the app to expand its
Considering Meta’s history with aggressive tracking, there were some concerns with regards to its regulations and how they would approach past issues. As a decentralised app though, it means that user data do not get stored on centralised servers, which makes the Threads app Meta’s biggest attempt in nurturing its reputation by prioritising privacy and security.
However, that’s still not enough to convince the European Union and its strict technology and GDPR regulations, so for the time being, Threads had rolled out in the US and the UK.
As soon as we get the go-to, we can’t wait to experiment with Threads and join the public conversation to create close-knit communities and weave new connections.
