With millions of downloads at its launch in early July, Threads, the new social network from Meta (Facebook and Instagram parent company), He already feels the hangover between the sharp drop in activity on the platform and the search for his identity.
“Threads still has a lot to prove”, estimated Jasmine Enberg, an analyst at Insider Intelligence. The app “cannot survive in the long term as nothing more than an alternative to Twitter or an extension of Instagram,” she said.
In just five days, more than 100 million accounts were created on Threads, after it went online on July 5, mainly thanks to a very simple registration from Instagram. Since then, the app has been downloaded more than 184 million times, according to Data.ai Intelligence.
Twitter has around 200 million regular users, while activity on Threads halved in a week, according to marketing company Similarweb.
Daily active users on mobile phones with the Android operating system went from about 49 million to just 23 million between July 7 and 14, according to the consultancy. And the ‘engagement’ -time that subscribers spend daily in the application- fell from 21 to 6 minutes in the same period in the United States.
It may interest you: Threads: Mark Zuckerberg tweeted for the first time in 10 years just to make fun of Twitter
“It was smart to propose Threads via Instagram to get signups off the ground immediately. And, given the current frustrations with Twitter, The moment to do it was well chosen.”Enberg stressed.
“But Meta still has a lot to do to keep the attention of its users, creating an identity, adding tools, including some basic functions”, added the expert.
“Instagram’s text-based conversation app”, as defined by Threads, looks a lot like Twitter from the start, but it is not yet possible to send private messages to users or do a search in the contents.
“I loved Twitter”
“It’s a bit rudimentary, but it’s nice that the head of Instagram be transparent about what is missing and what you are going to add“said Lauren Brose, director of marketing for a start-up technology company. This New Yorker joined Threads “out of curiosity” via the notification she received on Instagram. He later closed his Twitter account.
«A year ago, I adored him (Twitter). It was a place where the most educated people posted their comments and information (…) And the platform managed to encourage conversations from both sides“, remember.
«But since Elon Musk took control, the whole environment changed completely. The contents interested me much less, “summed up Brose.
The Tesla CEO bought Twitter last October and many of his decisions upset users and advertisers alike, from firing nearly all content moderation staff to changing –to payment service – from the verification of an account.
Threads was activated just after the billionaire’s latest controversial decision: limit the number of messages each user can see per day.
Also read: Did you see that the ‘little bird’ is no longer on Twitter? All about Elon Musk’s latest decision
As the number two in the world of online advertising, Meta «It has user segmentation and content moderation tools» that brands want, Enberg stressed.
“Threads therefore represents an alternative to Twitter, also for advertisers«, although for now there is no advertising on the new network.
“Value added”
But, is the latest creation of the Californian group going to put an end to Twitter? “No,” investor Jeremiah Owyang answers categorically. Twitter is still dominant.” he stated, especially thanks to the media and journalists who have been following this network for a long time.
“Threads is very late,” he explained, as the many users who fled the platform have adopted alternatives such as Mastodon, a community network, or Bluesky, a still-in-development app from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.
The new platform also suffers from not being present in Europe. Meta delayed its entry into this huge market for legal reasons.
Jeremiah Owyang also doubts that Threads will benefit in the long term from its birth within Instagram, since the text and the image do not necessarily attract the same audience. «I don’t feel like seeing the written messages of the people I follow on Instagram“, says the expert.
In an interview on the Hard Fork podcast, Adam Mosseri, director of both apps, said that expects Threads to focus “on topics that are already strong on Instagramsuch as sports, music, fashion, art.
Regarding current affairs and politics, where is the success of Twitter, “we will do nothing to boost them“, he claimed.
At this stage it is difficult to imagine how Threads can replace Twitter or what need it responds to.
“It’s the main question that Meta needs to answer,” Enberg said. «What is the added value of Threads?»
AFP.
More information: So you can download “Threads”, the new Meta application
