Can IG Threads Dethrone Twitter? - A Social Media Analysis
Elon Musk challenged Mark Zuckerberg to a cage fight, and Zuck responded by launching the most viable Twitter competitor to date.
Since Elon Musk first offered to buy Twitter and throughout his takeover, I always fervently supported Twitter. I’ve been on Twitter since I was a teenager, and I’ve always known it as a great place to build a community, connect with thought leaders and friends, and learn from experienced people.
But for the past year, I’ve consistently heard about the death of Twitter and the next Twitter killer. Between myself and my team, we’ve tried all of them, and here are the user numbers for each competitor platform from largest to smallest in 2023:
Twitter 330 million
Threads 30 million
Mastodon 10 million
Gettr 4 million
Truth Social 2 million
Nostr 2 million
Bluesky 200,000
There are others, but the point is Twitter is by far the largest. However, Meta’s overnight stealth launch of Instagram Threads is the best competition Twitter ever had, and I want to break through the hype cycle to explain why that’s impressive. But don’t get overhyped–it’s still not going to be a Twitter killer. But it is definitely a viable competitor–so much so that Twitter began the process to sue Meta on day one.
First, let’s do a quick timeline to how we got here—
History of IG Threads
IG Threads is Meta’s Instagram-branded rival to Twitter. The idea for Threads was pitched by employees to extend Instagram Notes into its own standalone app.
Branding is an interesting aspect of this–Facebook is largely tied to Cambridge Analytica and Zuckerberg’s Congressional hearings, but the company probably hopes Instagram gives it a degree of separation. Also of note, Musk previously cut links and mentions to Substack and Bluesky when he feared the competition, but the term “threads” is embedded into Twitter’s culture even better than Threads, where “tweets” are called “posts” and you “repost” or “quote post.”
It’s a text-based microblogging site set to launch July 6th, although it became available on the iOS App Store July 5th. Overnight, it gained 30 million users, easily dominating the numbers for smaller projects (also backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey), like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Nostr. By Friday, it had an estimated 69 million users.
The release followed the holiday weekend that started with an almost catastrophic Twitter outage and a mass migration for alternate options. The long holiday weekend meant everybody was talking, and Zuck got what feels like the entire world discussing its latest app.
Development of Threads started in January 2023, as a bizarre series of events unfolded.
Musk (a 52-year-old multibillionaire who spent most of his time running Twitter this year) challenged Zuckerberg (a 39-year-old multibillionaire who recently won gold and silver medals in a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournament) to a cage fight. And the internet erupted when Zuck accepted.
Zuckerberg began virtually sparring even more this week during the launch of Threads as he tweeted for the first time in over 12 years to take a jab at Musk
Zuckerberg is now using Threads the same way Musk does, to hobnob with influencers, promote engagement, and inevitably promote accounts he likes. Crypto Twitter especially jumped on the hype train to see what it’s all about, and I did too. It has a lot to offer beyond smaller competitors.
Meta’s nearly unlimited access to cash and talent means it can develop at a breakneck speed. Its connection to Instagram makes it (somewhat) easier to port your (IG-only) following into Threads. If you’re an Instagram influencer who never got traction on Twitter, you have a genuine shot at growth, and we’re already seeing these influencers cut the line substantially to gain hundreds of thousands of followers.
On the surface, it’s easy to believe the hype that Threads is a Twitter killer, but it’s missing a lot of key features that make Twitter what it is. Let’s dive into some of the obstacles they need to overcome before truly competing with Twitter.
1. Threads Has Data and Privacy Concerns
The European Union has much stricter data protection laws than the United States (See GDPR), and Threads is currently banned from the EU over failure to abide by these tougher laws. This means Threads currently lacks the same type of global community that Twitter has, which is especially important in Web3.
Privacy advocates even in countries where the app is allowed may not want any Meta apps on their phone. There are some serious privacy concerns to consider in the modern age of data scraping bots and AI.
2. Content Is Impossible to Find on Threads
Instagram is a cult of personality, and it’s clear Threads is just a reskinned text version of IG. You can’t search for keywords or topics–it’s almost as though content was an afterthought for the team, something that I’m sure appeals to the Instagram crowd. This kills the best part of Twitter.
Twitter is a place you can cross the social graph and break free from your echo chambers to see what anybody thinks (so long as they don’t block you). Exploring the world through knowledge and perspectives isn’t possible on Threads. It may look like Twitter on the surface, but content discoverability and navigation are terrible.
3. Threads Is Missing Social Audio
Twitter Spaces is an underrated tool that rose out of the Clubhouse and hosts a lot of A-list speakers, from Bloomberg and NPR staff to political candidates like Robert F Kennedy Jr, and artists and influencers like Nicki Minaj and Keemstar. A lot of people and brands are invested in Spaces, and even Bluesky has a version called Sky Spaces.
While everybody rushed to discuss Twitter vs Threads this week, various communities discussed the topic in Spaces for large audiences upwards of 150,000 people. Facebook tried (and failed) a Live Audio Rooms feature, and it’s unclear if the Threads development team will choose to develop in this direction.
4. Threads Moderation Is Almost Guaranteed to Fail
Meta apps like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are not known for having the best moderation. When it does work, it’s typically because of a volunteer force, like within Facebook Groups. This type of siloed moderation is more like Reddit or Facebook than Twitter, though, so it misses the mark of why we like Twitter.
Community Notes are also a crucial feature of Twitter where we can fact-check each other and better moderate misinformation. As of right now, I have a lot of concerns about censorship and misinformation on Threads.
5. Third-Party Development Is Lacking From Both
Twitter largely grew in its early days on the back of third-party developers. Even its TweetDeck was bought in 2011 for $40 million–it wasn’t developed internally. Instagram, on the other hand, has not been historically easy to use third-party apps like Hootsuite. It will take a lot of time for the internal Threads team to build out all the features to make it function more like Twitter.
Personally, I don’t think everybody will wait around for Threads to get better. It needs to relieve a Twitter addiction right now, and I just see a long roadmap of necessary features before it’s truly usable. Of course, third-party developers have also been casualties in Musk’s war against bots.
Final Verdict: Twitter Will Survive
IG Threads is interesting. Like many others on Twitter on Instagram, I signed up on launch day (& was one of the first million users) to see what it’s like. I made some comments, checked the functionality, and examined the UX. Although it may look like Twitter as an app, it definitely is not Twitter. It’s not the public town square that Twitter is…yet.
Meta can grow this into a serious alternative to Twitter. But even in the worst case if it matches and surpasses Twitter’s audience size, Threads still won’t kill Twitter. They will be different communities and provide two different town squares to share ideas. And hopefully it will inspire more viable solutions from other tech giants and startups.
But as it stands as of right now, Twitter will survive.
Lena Grundhoefer is the Founder of ZEITG3IST, a globally-recognized digital marketing and strategy agency. Through future-proof marketing solutions for the brands of tomorrow, we help Fortune 500 companies, disruptive companies as well as brands just starting out break into web3.