Meta’s Twitter competitor, Threads, launched on July 6th and I, like over 100 million other people, downloaded it during the first couple of days to see how it stacked up, both compared to Twitter and to Twitter’s much smaller competitor Mastodon. If you haven’t been following the drama, Twitter has become very polarizing since being bought by SpaceX and Tesla super billionaire Elon Musk last October. A lot of people, especially ones who like Musk, have become huge fans of Twitter, while others, particularly those turned off by his antics, have been looking for alternatives to Twitter, often without success. That isn’t to say that there aren’t alternatives, like Mastodon, but they’re often either smaller than what people are looking for lacking features they want. The two apps that looked like they might be able to replace, or at least challenge Twitter, were Meta’s rumored competitor which eventually launched as Threads, and Bluesky which was started by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.

Meta eventually announced a launch date for Threads but then, seemingly in response to Musk’s announcement that there were be a limit on the number of tweets people could read per day, released it and become one of the fastest downloaded apps ever. The app was incredibly fun for the first couple of days, reminding me of discovering weird videos in the early days of YouTube or customizing my Myspace page. Nobody seemed to know what they were doing and everyone was using the page for fun, not profit. After a couple of days though the site had lost a lot of its luster and a lot of what you saw was brands and pages and personalities. I think that In launching Threads when they did Meta made some incredible decisions that helped the app gain incredible initial traction but have also made some missteps that will need to be remedied sooner rather than later if they wish for Threads to remain competitive. Let’s start with what they did right.

What went right

1 - Capitalizing on anger at Musk’s decisions surrounding Twitter

Musk has made a number of polarizing decisions on Twitter that have simultaneously thrilled his base and infuriated almost everyone else. One of his most recent decisions was announcing Twitter would be rate limiting the number of tweets people would be able to see in an attempt to limit date scraping. I’m not sure how many people this actually but it made a lot of people very angry. Days later, while people were still discussing and arguing about his decision, Meta listed Threads on app stores and then launched it. Launching so close to Musk’s controversial rate limiting announcement, when so many people were angry, or angrier, at Twitter was a great idea.

2 - Tying Threads to Instagram

Threads is a separate app but it much more heavily tied to instagram than any of Meta’s other apps, which can function together but are technically all separate. Threads is much more heavily tied into Instagram, using the Instagram colors and requiring an Instagram account in order to open a Threads account. I think this was one of the most important things that Meta did to help propel Threads to it’s early success. Two of the barriers to starting a new social media page are setting it up and finding people to follow and to follow you. When you set the page up you need to think of a name, write a bio, pick photos, and verify your email address, among other things. You also need to find people to follow so you have something to look at and find people to follow you so you aren’t posting into the void. The second part is particularly frustrating, because without a solid social circle the app or site gets boring very fast. This is something I think previous Twitter competitors struggled with because their user bases just weren’t as big.

By tying Threads so closely to Instagram Meta avoided both of these problems. Set up was exceedingly easy. All you had to do was select the Instagram profile you wanted to make a Threads account for and you could then import your data, like name and bio, directly from Instagram. Before you knew it the account was set up. You could also automatically follow all of your Instagram followers. With a single click you could already be following hundreds of people and seeing their threads, at least as soon as they made their account. You could also immediately have your own followers if your Instagram followers chose to automatically follow everyone too.

There has absolutely been criticism of Meta’s choice to integrate the two apps so closely. Some people say that Threads success isn’t real because it’s just all of the Instagram users. Personally I think the numbers speak for themselves and if a lot of them stick around it was a good choice. It could become a problem if they never open it up to people without an Instagram account but for now I think it was a good choice. There’s also a clause that if you delete your Threads account it will also delete your Instagram account, which basically forces everyone to keep the account, even if they decide they don’t like it. This one I think could become a problem. A lot of the people leaving Twitter are leaving people they don’t like the things that Elon Musk has done. If Meta also does unpopular things, like essentially ban people from deleting their account, they could suffer the same fate. Despite that though I think tying the app, at least initially, to Instagram was a good idea that was instrumental in helping the spectacularly fast initial growth of the app.

What went wrong

1 - No follower list

In many apps, for example Twitter and TikTok, you have the option to view a feed of only the people you follow (and maybe ads). You won’t see influencers, or celebrities, or pages that repost certain topics, or brands unless you follow them. Some apps also have an algorithm based feed that includes things the app believes you will like. Currently this is the ONLY feed that threads has. While this was okay in the chaotic first couple of days it’s become tiring. A lot of what you see now is celebrities, personalities, brands, and pages (you know the kind; titles like ‘Beautiful World’ that show impossibly beautiful photos of nature or ‘Best Animals’ that show people’s cute pets). Normally if that gets tiring you can just switch and see what the people you follow are talking about. Not in Threads.

2 - No direct messages

There’s no way to privately communicate with people. For some people this might be a benefit since nobody will send them weird messages but I suspect many people would like to have the option to talk to someone privately. On Twitter I would sometimes message brands when I had a question. Not on Threads. My day job is a social media manager and after we ran our first giveaway we realized we couldn’t DM the winner. Luckily since Threads is connected to Instagram we could DM the winner there.

3 - Very bad search functionality

On other sites you can search a number of things, such as users, hashtags, and words. Different sites allow different things to be searched, but most sites have at least two searchable things. Right now Threads has one. The only thing you can search for is users. This leads to the same problem that #1 does. When you get tired of the feed the algorithm gives you you’re stuck. No searching for something interesting or trending or related to your hobbies or anything.

Threads started strong. Meta’s app is the first app that’s really threatened Twitter. That could really leach users away. But the app has lost a lot of its momentum since it launched and risks starting to lose users, if it hasn’t already. Meta needs to get some of these problems fixed ASAP because if people stop using the app there’s a chance they won’t start again.

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