The Threads on Twitter — Tangle or Untangle?
Social media platforms are a rage in the present-day world. They are a means of employment for influencers and are also an awareness and communication engine for people to connect with each other including celebrities. Political results are also influenced by social media as well. For the past decade, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter have ruled the roost with each platform differing in their capabilities and services it provides. Twitter is one such platform which limits the characters one can post but has become a powerful medium for the public and celebrities to express their views in short messages known as tweets. It is a living embodiment of free speech with some monitoring. While Facebook and Instagram belong to the same parent company, Meta, Twitter is a separate company being led by Elon Musk.
Recently Meta announced a new platform, Threads which intends to counter the dominance of Twitter. Threads is a platform which allows users to share text updates and join public conversations just like Twitter has been doing all this while. In simple words, a direct rival for Twitter has been brought on to the world stage with Meta looking to monopolise the entire social media ecosystem. This looks like a bold move and could upsurge the ecosystem altogether, but early results show that Threads may not be able to tangle Twitter completely. A recent google search trend indicated that Threads search is reducing as compared to Twitter which is constantly increasing. Threads can have an impact on the public, but the scale of twitter brings up a lot of scenarios on whether it will be able to tangle or untangle Twitter completely.
1. The Home of Celebrities and leader: Twitter is home to the biggest celebrities and political leaders like Joe Biden, Narendra Modi, and sporting celebrities. They make all their key announcements on Twitter and are home to millions of fans and thought leaders who are following them. Making the public shift to Threads would entail shifting these leaders to Threads which will be a herculean task unless there are major incentives in place along with the persistent self-bias effect. The hoards of public will not completely shift as they will still have to follow Twitter to get updates and follow their leaders and celebrities.
Tangle or Untangle: Threads will untangle Twitter more as it will end up establishing Twitter as the go to place for learning more about their leaders.
2. The Influencer/Creator Economy: Instagram is the home of influencers and their adoption of Twitter has been perennially low. Bringing Threads allows them to extend their followers on a twitter like platform and allow the creator economy to kick in further. Threads will be a good medium to share quick updates/snippets on top of their usual reels and stories. Users who are in search of quick tips on life, comedy, food recipes will be inclined to jump on the Threads bandwagon.
Tangle or Untangle: This aspect will tangle Twitter as Twitter historically is unable to provide such facets on social media
3. Power of money and influence: Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg usher in a lot of money on their platform and a lot of user adoption will boil down to who spends more money on their platform to bring in new users, features and retain the users. While Elon Musk espouses a lean team, the dollars at his disposal will be a good measure against Mark Zuckerberg.
Tangle or Untangle: Twitter will be caught between tangle and untangle as both its founders can influence the direction of the platform and pull in new users
4. Intellect Establishment: Public perception is that twitter shouts intellect while Instagram is to make people addicted to stories, posts, and reels. The same perception will be true with the introduction of Threads. Threads will have to change its public perception of bringing forth intellect on its platform to make sure that users on twitter have a reason to shift to Threads. The public perception of having intellect is very important for the success of such a platform and can be a daunting task for Threads
Tangle or Untangle: Twitter will be untangled as its intellect establishment is very strong and Thread will have to do a lot of work to shift that perception along with Meta.
The initial signs of Threads tangling, or untangling indicate more of a benefit for Twitter unless Threads brings something out of the box to tackle the behemoth of Twitter in the world of social media for enabling short texts and public conversations.
