And then came Threads
Twitter started the short-text post offering, only to be followed by an ever-growing list of look-alike platforms, including Mountain, Bluesky, Mastodon, Tumblr, Counter Social, Plurk, Amino (teen-focused), Aether, Post, Hive Social, CoHost, Reddit, Discord, Clubhouse, Parler, Koo, Spill, Micro.blog, Bastyon, T2, BeReal, and more.
Well, will you look at that! Meta’s new app, Threads, is a hit, becoming both the fastest-growing social app ever, beating the previous record for the fastest-growing app in history set by ChatGPT, according to a UBS study. While ChatGPT took two months to hit 100 million users, Threads hit that milestone in five days.
Oh, but wait. A study from data-tracking site SimilarWeb finds that the number of daily active users has dropped from 49 million to 23.6 million in a week, meaning people who rushed to sign up aren’t coming back regularly.
Perhaps more importantly, a new study by Website Planet found that Threads is drawing more engagement than Twitter. The research studies 30 brands that had accounts on Twitter and Threads and made the same posts (or different posts simultaneously) on both.
Of the brands analyzed on July 7, 87% had more engagement on Threads than on Twitter. “On average, these brands saw eight times more likes on the new platform,” Website Planet found. “Threads showed a higher average engagement rate than Twitter (0.45% vs. 0.02%).”
Of course, much of that engagement can be explained by the novelty factor and the ease with which Instagram’s 1.5 billion users can download the new app. Threads also have to contend with the fact that the average churn rate for new apps is 73% over three months.
Converse claimed its handle, marking its entry on the Twitter-clone app. The brief for appearing on Threads was a quick text exchange between the company’s CMO Sejal Shah Miller and her social media team: Keep it organic and playful, and maintain the Converse-vibe. “The appeal of threads is you’re able to have a conversation,” Miller told Adweek. “There’s a lot of creative license and space to experiment and tinker—and that was invigorating for our social team.”
Despite its 1 million Twitter followers, the brand stopped posting on the platform in October last year. On Threads, the American footwear brand saw a massive follower spike in the first 24 hours. At the time of writing, it has 473,000 followers, which continues to grow but is comparatively less than its 10.8 million followers on Instagram.
Take Our Money, Put Ads On Threads
High-performing ads on Facebook and Instagram have marketers ready to throw cash at Threads. How long can Meta wait?
According to research from Pew, in May, 60% of Twitter’s most devoted users reported that they have recently taken a break from the platform, with a quarter of those users reporting they plan to quit the app entirely within the next year.
Mark Zuckerberg owes Elon Musk a huge debt of gratitude. Never before has his character been viewed more sympathetically by the tech community and the public alike. Thanks to the latter’s ceaselessly puerile antics and evident inability to distinguish sound business ideas from ploys conceived on a hallucinogenic trip that probably should not have lived beyond their transparently desperate performative cries for attention (see SEC v. Elon Musk), the Zuck has almost overnight become the crowd favorite and the smart money's bet to win the (economically insignificant) digital turf battle for micro-blogging.
Currently, the search function on Threads is limited to finding other users. You can search for specific usernames, but the app does not support hashtag or topic searches at present. This limitation restricts the app’s functionality beyond scrolling the feed and looking up users. However, we anticipate that Instagram will expand the search capabilities of Threads as it gains traction and continues to evolve.
Should you decide that Threads isn’t the right fit for you and want to delete your account, there’s a catch. Unfortunately, you cannot delete your Threads account without also deleting your Instagram account. This move from Mark Zuckerberg is both sneaky and strategic, as it ensures the retention of the initial user base of Instagram while encouraging users to stay within the broader ecosystem.
As advertisers, on a new platform launch, we are chomping at the bit to start ads. While we haven’t heard anything from Meta HQ about ads integration or processes, the most likely path is for Meta to integrate Threads ad placements into Meta Business Manager. This would allow a seamless transition into advertisements on Threads for advertisers currently running on Facebook and Instagram by just selecting an additional placement. However, Meta may have other plans in store for ads on Threads – we’ll just have to wait and see…
