2023-10-15 20:36:42
A little over three months ago, Meta launched a frontal attack on Platform X, which was then called Twitter. The parent company of Facebook and Instagram launched Threads, a service designed to compete with Twitter, and it was off to a flying start. Within five days, Threads had more than 100 million users. But the initial euphoria was followed by disillusionment; market researchers reported that the daily user numbers fell dramatically after just a few weeks.
However, Meta remains undaunted and continues to put a lot of effort into establishing threads. A few days ago the company announced new functions, which can also be seen as a further offensive in competition with X. What is particularly noteworthy is the ability for users to edit entries.
This is a feature that Twitter introduced about a year ago, just before Elon Musk became the owner. Twitter users had been calling for it for years, but the company resisted it for a long time. On Twitter, it was part of a paid subscription from the start and was therefore reserved for paying users; this remained the case even after it was sold to Musk and converted into X.
The editing function for threads is now free. Users have five minutes after publishing an entry to make changes. A small icon is then added to signal that adjustments have been made. Unlike X, however, Threads does not yet display earlier versions of a changed entry. Another feature that has now been announced is voice messaging.
Huge starting advantage
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg set ambitious goals when launching Threads. He said at the time that he thought there should be a public conversation platform with more than a billion users: “Twitter had the opportunity to do it, but didn’t do it. Hopefully we will succeed.”
Threads had a huge starting advantage compared to other Twitter alternatives like Mastodon or Bluesky. Meta has closely linked the new platform to its Instagram service, which has two billion monthly users. For example, new Threads users were immediately given the option to import their Instagram profile and follow the same people as on Instagram. At launch, Threads lacked a number of functions that Twitter has, such as the ability to only show entries from users you follow. Some of these features have since been added.
Enthusiasm quickly cooled down
The initial enthusiasm for threads cooled down quite quickly. The market research group Sensortower reported a little more than two weeks after the launch that the number of daily users and the time spent on threads had fallen by more than 75 percent again. Zuckerberg was not discouraged by this, at least outwardly. At the end of July, he said he couldn’t have hoped for a better start and now it’s all about retaining users. Meta is now trying to do this with additional functions, and the connection with Instagram is being played out even more aggressively, for example by showing Instagram users content from threads that they cannot easily hide.
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The market research group Insider Intelligence expects moderate growth for Threads. She estimates the service will have 23.7 million users in the U.S. by the end of this year, and that number will rise to 33.9 million by 2025. X’s user numbers would fall from 56.1 million to 47.0 million over the same period.
Insider analyst Jasmine Enberg told the FAZ that Threads had not yet found its “identity”. The service cannot simply be an extension of Instagram, nor can it rely solely on X’s missteps. Threads must ensure that its early users remain active on the platform so that “network effects” arise “before it is too late”. If this doesn’t succeed, she can imagine that Meta Threads will give up again next year or merge with another of its services such as Instagram. Threads is not yet available in the EU for regulatory reasons.
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