🧵 Meta’s Threads launched last week! 🧵
💥 Twitter’s newest rival is off to a flying start, with more than 30 million users joining in its first 12 hours. It now has over 97M signups.
🙃 While Threads has now been widely launched globally, it’s yet to be available in the European Union due to data privacy regulations.
🙌🏼 It’s been successful in part due to avoiding the ‘cold-start’ of most new platforms, as users can log in with their Instagram handle, and can import their Instagram bio and photo with one click.
🤬 Another reason for its fast start, is user and advertiser’s rising dissatisfaction with Twitter. Jasmine Enberg, Principal analyst at Insider Intelligence noted, “Meta only needs 1 in 4 Instagram users to use Threads monthly for it to be as big as Twitter, and Meta has the scale, resources and execution strategy to make that happen.”
🤝 You can reply to other people’s Threads, and your replies will be threaded together so that it is easy to follow the conversation. You can also repost other people’s Threads to your own profile, or you can quote them to share your thoughts on their content.
🐦 The timeline feed is similar to Twitter’s, though there’s currently no option to view only users you follow – recommended posts from around the network appear too.
📹 Posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos, and videos up to 5 minutes in length. You can also upload carousels (similar to Instagram).
🎨 Creative features are pretty basic so far. No GIFy integrations, stickers, or frills. Other notable differences include no hashtags, no ‘edit’ button, and no DM’s (community managers everywhere, rejoice!) Meta have indicated that these are on the product roadmap for the next 6 – 12 months.
🔒 In terms of safeguarding measures, you’re in control of who can mention you, reply to you, and you also have the ability to add hidden words so you can filter out replies that contain words you don’t want to see. Important to highlight, too, that any accounts you’ve blocked on IG will automatically be blocked on Threads.
🗝️ Instagram’s other suite of safety and user controls are available to Threads users, and content is moderated by IG’s existing standards.
⭐️ Threads has decentralised ambitions – a win for creators who will be able to own their audience, and take them to other platforms.
Unlike some of the other recent standalone apps (BeReal, Lemon8, etc.), we anticipate Threads to have legitimate staying power based on its explosive launch, expansive early reach (i.e. anyone within Instagram’s massive user base) and appealing product functionality.
SO what should you do next?
🔐 Secure your handles.
If you want to be discovered, we’d recommend uploading an Instagram Story alerting your IG following that you’re on Threads, and linking for easy-to-follow access.
It is definitely worth getting in early while the experimental phase is still acceptable and appropriate, but consider how it fits with your overall social strategy and what resources you can dedicate to it while the audience is still growing.
Also, tell your media team to hold tight — Threads will apparently be ad free until they have 1BN users. In other words, twice the size of Twitter.
On that note, now for our shameless self-promo – come help us up our own Thread count @WeAreSocial and stay tuned for more news and updates on all the channels.
TL;DR: Now that Twitter is dead, all eyes are on Threads…
