Joining Threads
Twitter is my favorite app. I spend somewhere around 10 hours a week on it. My tweets never go viral, but reading news and every hot take out there has been invaluable towards becoming an independent thinker. Twitter is where I go for breaking news, funny memes, and to hear the opinions of those I respect.
Sadly, recent policies such as rate limiting have killed the user experience. Apps like Bluesky, Mastadon, Lens (for the crypto folks) have all gained varying levels of attention, but so far, failed to reach critical mass.
Enter Threads. I’ve scrolled it for a few minutes. Four immediate thoughts:
I don’t see a convenient way to be anonymous on Threads. Your account is tied to your Instagram or Facebook profile. At its easiest, creating an anonymous profile requires starting a finsta. I’m interested to see how this tradeoff decision affects user dynamics. Think about that Dolly Parton-inspired “LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter” meme. What happens when your identity on one network cannabalizes the other?
The conflict arises because Twitter is a different type of social media platform than Instagram. Most of the followers I’ve accumulated on Instagram are from this last decade as a high school and college student. Simply put, Instagram exists to put one’s personal life first. Twitter doesn’t. Twitter is closer to an online chat room. Your social graph can be a bunch of random Internet strangers… and that’s totally OK! Frankly, Twitter is for my miscellaneous thoughts on tech, business, whatever. The type of stuff that a bunch of my IRL friends are going to find boring. Like staying anonymous, I believe “legacy friendships” ingrained on Threads will have an impact on the engagement dynamic on the app.
I think celebrities will have an even bigger presence on Threads. And as I’ve mentioned to friends and might write separately about, there’s no better time to be a celebrity/influencer(?) than now. If I ran a consumer growth-stage or PE fund, having a celebrity as an investment partner is a no-brainer. Frankly, someone with the celebrity network should put a fund whose main value prop is to simply connect influencers with portcos.
Get ready for a lot of mobile notifications in the next two weeks. Most people I know have an Instagram account. People are talking about the latest social app du jour, which means a surge in sign-ups (already two million downloads in two hours!) - and the first thing after registering is the option to follow all your existing friends on Instagram. I have to respect Zuck’s abiilty to move billions of users at scale. It’s his one true advantage: he’s got a big social graph and he’s not afraid to use it.
I’m excited to keep playing around with the app. Join me on Threads and let’s see if it can finally take down the king.