Tangerine’s social strategist, Ciaran Howley, takes on Threads and its impact (or lack thereof) on the industry, now it’s been live for a couple of weeks.
Weeks on from the roaring success of Meta’s X/Twitter killer Threads’ launch and it’s fair to say the shine and excitement has tempered. Features are missing, attention is dwindling and although over a hundred million users made it the most successful app launch in history, many are wondering: why am I still here?
It hasn’t been long since bleary eyed social media managers across the country woke up to find Threads had launched 15 hours earlier than expected. They rolled out of bed, set up their personal and professional accounts and were surprised to find out they were now trapped. Deleting your Threads account also deletes your Instagram account. There was already no looking back.
The rush for account registration saw 30 million users sign up for the app in the first 24 hours. Scary numbers for X/Twitter execs to see, considering their app has taken 17 years to build up to roughly 400 million users. But what we’re seeing shouldn’t be setting off every alarm bell at their San Francisco HQ.
Instead of, what many assumed would be, millions abandoning the bird app to flock to Threads – most of the early adopters are Instagram users shifting across and hitting copy + paste. They’re not only bringing their profile – but they’re bringing over their networks and connections too.
Building a profile on Threads will automatically connect you with everyone you followed on Instagram and vice versa. People who were used to having to hard reset and graft to build up new followings on new platforms suddenly had a head start. It felt great.
That little burst of initial success, that little hit of serotonin, was enough to hook many and the rush to stake their flag in the sand drowned out any conversation about what the app was actually supposed to do. Accounts that had existed for five minutes had hundreds of engagements on posts as they stepped in to pre-built audiences and account holders excitedly shared stories of big numbers and bigger potential.
A couple of days later, with the initial buzz gone, the reality of life on the app started to settle in. For many this sobriety kicked in quickly. By the second day, users on the app were spending 40% less time than they were on day one and by day five, they were spending less than a third. Rather than grow exponentially through word of mouth and good experience, the number of overall active users has been declining since day two.
Those initial hits of success, the novelty of sharing quips rather than snaps with your Instagram following, seemed to be the limit of the app’s functionality. More generous users noted to each other that the general demeanor and mood on the app was more positive but beyond that, where were the features that have made X/Twitter the center of culture and conversation for years?
It’s obvious now that Meta had rushed their fledgling app to market before it had the wings to support itself. X/Twitter opened a window of opportunity for competitors that was too hard to resist, as they declared they were limiting the number of profiles a user could view. The latest in a long line of missteps that have disappointed most users and infuriated the rest.
Of course, Threads have just this week put similar limits on their own app too. If you’re going to be the bearer of bad news, just don’t be first in line. What we are served with is a shell of what could be. There is no search bar for content. You can’t search for keywords around topics and hashtags don’t exist to track more specific conversations.
As I settled in to watch the British Grand Prix at the weekend, I opened the app to get a flavour of the excitement and debate that normally surrounds the biggest shared experiences in sporting events. I found nothing. Not through lack of content but in there being no way to discover it. It offered no value as a second screen experience. Deflated, I returned to X/Twitter.
There are no direct messages and you can’t privately contact another user. For those who suffered direct abuse and harassment on X/Twitter, this may be something of a blessing, but it removes options and choice and a layer of conversation that was useful to many. Not least brands, who use X/Twitter as an important customer service channel.
Not only does it prevent them from resolving the problems of their customers on the app, they have also found that the app puts the same focus on replies as it does on standard posts. The majority of content that I’ve seen from brands I follow has been them responding to the complaints of their customers.
Instead of receiving the messages I’m sure they want me to see/hear, the brand stories from their creative house and the witty reactive of their social team, it’s elevating the voices of those who are most frustrated with their product and service.
When brands do get the content they value on to their feed, they have no way of knowing whether it’s doing the job they need it to do. They don’t know how many people it reached, how many people viewed video content or for how long.
All that can be reported are engagements, an action we know only a fraction of their audience are likely to take. How can put-upon brand managers build a coherent picture for their bosses with only a single piece of the jigsaw?
We’re left with the feeling that Meta prioritized a tipping point in public sentiment as a one-off opportunity to move users over. They gambled it was a better approach than building a compelling experience that makes social media users, who have a wealth of distractions and demands on their time, want to actually stay. It could still prove the smart play. Dozens of new platforms launch each year, yet almost none of them even get a cursory glance.
Despite all this, Meta’s staying power makes the eventual success of Threads feel inevitable. They should have enough of the audience’s captive attention to convince them over time and win the second chance that most don’t receive.
A stay of execution for X/Twitter and Instagram Chief, Adam Mosseri (above), has already shared that we shouldn’t expect missing functionality to be added any time soon. If Threads isn’t the coup de grace they feared - can they do enough to recover in the generous time Meta have given them? The next move is with them.
