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Meta’s Twitter fighter Threads is a certified hit.
According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 100 million people signed up for the service in less than five days. That’s a massive number of users for a service just getting off the ground.
Twitter, meanwhile, isn’t looking so hot. According to Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, traffic to Twitter has plummeted since Threads hit the web last week.
But Threads still has a number of obstacles to overcome before Zuckerberg takes a victory lap as the man who took down Elon Musk’s Twitter.
“I think it's still too early to say whether or not that drop is going to be durable in terms of whether or not those users are going to be fully satisfied having moved on to Threads,” Columbia Business School professor Dan Wang told Yahoo Finance.
“We saw something like this early on with Mastodon when Musk first made the [Twitter] acquisition and obviously that didn't pan out for Mastodon. I think we've yet to see whether or not there's going to be the same level of engagement on Threads and the same type of content,” he added.
For Threads to be a true success, it needs to not only keep users engaged but also win over advertisers. After all, competitors like Twitter clone Mastodon have tried to take on Musk, and haven’t been able to knock him down.
Software before content
If you’ve jumped on Threads already, you’ve likely noticed something beyond the initial wave of excitement of joining a new social network: No one really has anything to say.
In my experience, most people are asking silly survey questions and wondering what to call individual posts (they’re “threads”). That’s part of the growing pains of a new social network, especially one that spawned as a means of replacing another, more controversial platform. But this could also prove to be a weakness for Threads when it comes to keeping users engaged.
“For organic growth that you'd like to see and viral growth you'd like to see it's more of the content coming before the users,” Wang said. “I think in this case, we're seeing the users come before the content.”
Take TikTok for instance. The short-form video app didn’t truly take off until user content started going viral — whether that’s dance videos, ridiculous challenges, or personalities using the platform as a launch pad for a shot at internet fame.
Critical mass didn’t happen on the app because people were interested in the software, Wang explained. It was because they were interested in the content.
In the case of Threads, however, users are more interested in checking out how the app differs from Twitter rather than the content people are posting. And it’s the content that will keep people coming back.
“I think I was on Threads four or five times, maybe six times last week, and I totally forgot about it on Monday,” Carnegie Mellon University Heinz College professor Ari Lightman told Yahoo Finance.
“Threads is still a bombardment of information. It's not organized enough in a fashion that I find educational or informational,” Lightman said. “I will go back to it, absolutely. As more people sign up you get network effects and that becomes a place that you want to post because more of your people are there.”
Europe launch on hold
While Threads might have more than 100 million sign-ups so far, the platform is missing a huge chunk of the global population that can’t access the app: Europe.
As of now, Meta is holding off on launching in the European Union as it determines the potential impact of the block’s Digital Markets Act, which could fine the company for sharing data between Instagram and Threads.
“The upcoming regulatory uncertainty has played into our decision not to launch right now,” a Meta spokesperson told Yahoo Finance. “Europe continues to be an incredibly important market for Meta, and we hope to make new products available here in the future.”
Staying out of the EU would be a huge problem for Threads as it seeks to overtake Twitter and become the go-to place for quick news and updates for users around the globe, University of Pennsylvania Wharton School professor Pinar Yildirim explained.
“That stands as a potential challenge for them moving forward,” she said.
For now, Threads is an impressive story of the power of one app harvesting users from another app to grow its footprint on the web. But Meta is going to have to do more than just get people to sign up to make Threads a success. It needs those users to be engaged, willing to share their thoughts, and, oh yeah, launch in one of the world’s biggest markets.
Daniel Howley is the tech editor at Yahoo Finance. Follow him @DanielHowley
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