(TND) — Meta debuted Threads this week in a move seen as direct competition for Twitter.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg boasted of 70 million sign-ups already on Threads by Friday morning.
“Way beyond our expectations,” he posted on his new platform.
So, will Threads be a Twitter killer?
Probably not, said social media expert Andrew Selepak.
But it could have a big impact on Twitter and the social media landscape, he said.
Selepak, who teaches at the University of Florida, said this isn’t the first would-be Twitter competitor we’ve seen. He noted the likes of Parler, Mastodon and Truth Social.
What’s different is Meta’s built-in user base and Meta’s “ungodly amount of money” it comes armed with in this fight.
But even those advantages don’t guarantee Threads will succeed, he said.
“Google Plus was supposed to be a competitor to Facebook, and it died,” Selepak noted.
Meta rolled out Threads in the mobile app stores for users Wednesday in more than 100 countries.
The company says the microblogging app is a “space for real-time updates,” much like Twitter.
Posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos, and videos up to 5 minutes long. Twitter has a 280-character limit.
Twitter, meanwhile, has reportedly threatened legal action against Meta.
And Twitter owner Elon Musk declared Thursday on his platform that, “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”
Selepak said Meta is clearly trying to take advantage of turmoil at Twitter.
Some of the changes Musk has ushered in since his acquisition has riled some users. Most recently, Musk imposed restrictions on the number of tweets users can see per day. He said it was intended to prevent “extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation.”
And Selepak said Musk’s free speech crusade has invited “new perspectives and new voices in your timeline that were probably not seen before, because there were executives at Twitter who were putting their thumb on the scales of what content users were seeing.”
Some folks like that change. Others don’t.
Selepak said Meta’s move also reinforces the idea that it doesn’t innovate, it just copies successful ideas from other platforms.
Facebook tried to buy Snapchat and was turned down, so it added stories, he said. Instagram Reels were designed to compete with TikTok, he said.
Meta decided to tie its launch of Threads to Instagram.
You must use your Instagram account to join Threads, though you can make customizations once you join.
People don’t exactly use Instagram and Twitter for the same things, so it will be interesting to see how the Instagram user base takes to Threads. And it will be interesting to see how Threads evolves, either as its own thing or as a Twitter clone.
“It's one thing to follow a family member on Instagram so that you can see their vacation pictures,” Selepak said. “It's another thing to follow a family member on Instagram (or Threads) where you read their political rants. It's one of the reasons that Facebook's been having so much trouble.”
Selepak said Meta likely looked at where young users were in choosing to tie Threads to Instagram over Facebook.
“(Young people) think about Facebook as the place their parents and grandparents go,” he said.
So, if Selepak doesn’t see this new endeavor as a Twitter killer, how does he see Threads having an impact?
His “pessimistic view” is that Twitter will turn into a right-wing dominated platform, while Threads grows into a left-wing dominated platform.
“I don't think it will kill off Twitter, but I think it could further divide our partisan country in terms of who we're interacting with on social media,” he said.
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