Thread again.

The biggest reason why Meta's Twitter clone may prevail.

Mark Zuckerberg dropped a bomb on the social media marketplace this week. It’s only been about 72 hours since Meta introduced Threads, an unmistakably similar app to Twitter, but it’s already racked up over 70 million users and sits atop the App Store charts. I’m not sure how long Zuck’s had Threads in the cannon, especially as his core endeavors (Facebook, his metaverse) are in disrepair and Meta is hemorrhaging employees. But it couldn’t have come at a more opportune time, as his competitor Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover has been disappointing to say the least. Does the world need Threads? No. But does it want Threads? I think so.

There are just as many op-eds and thinkpieces about Threads as there are Threads themselves. Threads will win, Threads will fail, Threads has privacy issues, Threads won’t let you delete it without deleting your Instagram (Liz Hagelthorn was the first to do a clinical assessment). Anecdotally, I find myself reaching for Threads above any other social app. Although I have the least amount of followers there (1/6 of Twitter and 1/15 of IG), I’m much happier with my connection. My engagement isn’t necessarily higher on Threads, but I’m enjoying a healthier rapport with followers, old and new. It’s also nice to resume a dialogue with names I haven’t seen in some time, due to algorithmic walls and social noise.

Threads is currently leading because we’ve been starved for a Twitter replacement and this one has Meta’s built-in audience. It’s also irreverent and less serious. I don’t have the data to back this up, but I’m assuming most Threads heads abandoned Twitter long ago or never signed up for Elon’s app in the first place. If they’re accustomed to Instagram and TikTok rules, they’re brand builders and editors, carefully manicuring and curating their self-presentation. This not only requires a great deal of effort, but is laden with pressure. Threads, meanwhile, is a sanctuary to shitpost and babble mindlessly.

In my opinion, the main reason why Threads is exceeding expectations has nothing to do with Meta’s intentions or design. It’s simply the youngest of all the major social networks. I’ve always believed that social media’s biggest bug is one that has yet to be acknowledged or addressed by TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter: Time. None of these apps age well. The longer we use these apps, the more we complain, the less pleasant the experience. Have you ever thought about why? It’s not just the UI/UX flaws, non-chronological feeds, and inability to edit.

The apps don’t age well because its users don’t age well. The real reason people grow tired of their social media is that — as the years trudge by — they grow tired of the people they follow (or to be fair, the content they publish). And the people who follow them get tired and disengage. There’s fatigue all around.

Okay, I’m going to speak as if we are all companies, since anybody who has an online profile has developed a personal brand. The Internet smiles upon the recent. The longer you stick around, you are penalized. At best, your early followers become numb or desensitized to your patterns. At worst, they start to dislike your content or even mute you. This can take weeks or it can take ten years. Think of the IG Story circles that used to be prioritized in your top bar. The ones you checked religiously just a few months ago are now buried deeper in your timeline. So, what does it behoove brands (all of us) to amass more followers if the earlier generations are being pointed (or pointing themselves) elsewhere? This crushes the algorithm and meaningful engagement.

As a follower, your social experience also wilts as the years go by. You’re shackled to people and brands that meant more to you in a different season of life. There may be guilt in unfollowing them. Or even apathy. I’ve been on Instagram since Year 1 and now follow over 4,500 influencers, companies, artists, and friends from the last decade of my life: high school friends, somebody I met once at a convention, a rapper who was hot in 2012, a silly meme page. 4,500 people is a lot of Instagrams to monitor, but it’s relative. When science says you can really only have 5 close friends at a time, it doesn’t matter if you’re stalking 10 profiles or 1,000. It’s too many and it’s gonna wear. There’s never been (understandably, from a business perspective) a function to mass-unfollow everybody. Nobody’s gonna take the time to disconnect hundreds or thousands of people they follow. But, I’ve always thought it’d keep people excited about their social apps if they had the option to hard-reset who they follow and who follows them.

This would provide for fresh discovery and authentic relationships on both sides. Brands could ensure that their communities wanted to be there, instead of being passive observers. As a proactive follower, your feeds would be stocked with people and things you want to commit to today, not a profile you clicked on randomly on a dark and lonely night. You’d not only see a boost in Likes and Comments, but a more fruitful and human conversation abound.

How do I know this? Because we’re seeing it happen right now with Threads, which is as close as we’ve gotten to this reboot (especially if you chose not to transfer over who you follow). It’s a new day, an opportunity to clean the slate and restore a spirited social experience. Meta’s newest platform isn’t a technological breakthrough by any means, but its novelty is in its…novelty.

A couple days ago, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey re-tweeted this stark criticism that design-wise, Threads is indistinguishable from countless other apps that have attempted to replace Twitter (Bluesky, Farcaster, etc.). He pokes, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 7 Twitter clones,” intimating that we’re missing the opportunity to innovate the next social media.

But what if there’s nothing wrong with social media itself? I’ve always believed that the Twitter model was the Alpha and Omega of social networks. As far as sharing information and building communities, Jack got the wheel right on the first try. And yet we’ve spent the last decade complicating it with vanishing videos and editing tools and live chats. Brevity is the soul of wit, as evidenced by the limited number of characters that a tweet can hold, but also in the simplicity of the blue bird app.

The problem with Twitter, Instagram, and now even TikTok, is not in how the house is fashioned. It’s that we’ve been living in these structures for so long that we’re getting cabin fever. It’s like we’ve been quarantined together in a COVID bunker in the midst of a decade-long winter. There are thousands of roommates in here now and we’re dying for a fresh start - new friendships or new perspectives on existing ones. Even if it means moving to the exact same house with identical architecture.

It was never about the building, it was about its inhabitants. And it wasn’t about the inhabitants, it was about the connections.

But as I’ve said before, it’s far too early to call a final judgment on a platform as new as this. It’s best to watch this one play out. Download the app, tickle its bells and whistles, ponder which improvements might update down the line, and study how people are using it to communicate and network. I like Threads for now. Just don’t hold me to that later.