TWITTER STILL A LONG WAY FROM BEING REPLACED
But signups are one thing, staying power is another. The hype around Threads will carry it for the near future, particularly as it gradually becomes more widely available (Meta has held the app back in European markets to ensure regulatory compliance).
Beyond that, things get much more difficult. Twitter is still a long way from being replaced, given there are many reasons it could still be considered the superior platform.
First, Twitter still has vastly more people on it, measured at 238 million “monetisable” daily active users just before Musk took over (he hasn’t updated the number since). Those people have long-cultivated followings and connections they may not want to shake.
Functionality-wise, Twitter’s trending topics, even in their current neglected state, give a feeling of a collective community mood that Threads lacks. Threads doesn’t yet enable hashtags, a key tool for organising and discovering both basic information and social movements, such as #MeToo or #BlackLivesMatter.
Twitter’s audio chatting tool, Spaces, gives the network an additional “live” vibrancy that Threads, despite its launch night energy, might lack.
META’S CORPORATE INSTINCTS
These features could arrive on Threads in good time, perhaps. But the bigger barrier to the app’s success is Meta’s own corporate instincts. Already, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri, who by extension is now in charge of Threads, has said that rather than implement a messaging system, the company will instead encourage private chats via Meta’s other apps.
He says they’re doing that to save people having an “extra inbox” to check. I say it’s to give an engagement boost to Meta’s lame Messenger app. And besides, if a person leaves Twitter, then surely they’re net even on the number of inboxes in their life.
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