MENLO PARK, Calif.—As expected, Meta has launched a new social media platform called Threads that will directly compete with Twitter.
The new app, built by the Instagram teams at Meta, allows users to log in using their Instagram account. Posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos, and videos up to 5 minutes in length.
The launch comes at a time when Twitter has been under fire from users, advertisers and regulators for tech outages, unpopular changes in the way the platform works and concerns by advertisers that their marketing campaigns will be associated with misinformation and objectionable content.
While some have called the new product a Twitter-killer, the launch will, at minimum, will produce the kind of intense competition in the social media space not seen in years.
Unlike other Twitter-like platforms that have struggled to gain traction, Meta's new Threads platform would complement Meta’s Facebook and Instagram social media platforms and provide Meta with the ability to promote Threads to the billions of accounts currently using Facebook and Instagram.
To capitalize on that, Threads is very closely tied to Instagram. Users must have an Instagram to signup and the Threads user name is their Instagram handle.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that Threads achieved 10 million signups within seven hours of its launch.
Since then other social media platforms competing with Twitter have reported upticks in usage but none have come close to challenging Twitter’s reach of about 450 million users.
Media researcher and financial analyst Brian Wieser, CFA and founder of Madison and Wall has argued that Meta's market power could allow it to succeed where others have failed.
“Twitter’s self-imploding antics of the Elon Musk era and the failure of upstarts to capitalize on the situation should mean there is an opportunity for someone to capture significant consumer engagement and advertiser budgets from Twitter,” Wieser noted in a July 5 post.
“While trust in Meta as a protector of data may be poor and while there are many, many reasons to have antipathy towards the parent company for consumers and advertisers alike, if anyone could take an existing base of producers of content to catalyze usage of such a product, Meta is very well-positioned,” Wieser said.
One key issue will be addressing advertiser concerns about having their marketing campaigns associated with the objectionable misinformation and racist material that can be found on Twitter.
If both Twitter under its new CEO Linda Yaccarino and Meta's new Threads platform can overcome those problems, Wieser argues that "this won’t necessarily be a zero-sum game: it’s very possible that a successful Threads could then lead to a vibrant and competitive sector for micro-blogging as a result.”
Others see Threads as a potential Twitter-killer. In an email to TV Tech, Luke Lintz, CEO of the digital marketing and social media company HighKey Enterprises argued that “"In the hyper competitive market of social media, Meta's launch of Threads could be the beginning of the end for Twitter. Not only will the new microblogging platform look and feel nearly identical to Twitter, it will be seamlessly connected to Instagram, which has more than 2.3 billion users and is growing.”
As previously reported, “[t]his could spell bad news for Twitter, which only has 450 million users and has lost more than 32 million users since Elon Musk bought it in 2022,” Lintz argued. “In March, Musk said revenue at Twitter had fallen by 50% over the past two years and it's not clear how it intends to bring those advertisers back.”
In the announcement launching Threads, Meta said that "Instagram is where billions of people around the world connect over photos and videos. Our vision with Threads is to take what Instagram does best and expand that to text, creating a positive and creative space to express your ideas. Just like on Instagram, with Threads you can follow and connect with friends and creators who share your interests – including the people you follow on Instagram and beyond. And you can use our existing suite of safety and user controls."
