While Twitter continues to sink into a flaming tar pit of bad decisions, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook/Instagram parent company Meta are giving a teaser of their alternative platform. As a direct competitor to Twitter, Zuckerberg has created Threads, which touts a fully-functional interface similar to Twitter.
Social media consultant Matt Navara posted a screenshot from Zuckerberg’s post, using Threads with the comment “Let’s do this. Welcome to Threads.” The post was made inaccessible minutes later.
In the wake of Elon Musk steering Twitter straight into an ocean of horrible, a number of sites are popping up as havens to those wishing to jump ship before it sinks completely. Sites like Bluesky and Mastodon have opened their arms to people looking for a social media platform that actually works. Pillowfort and Cohost are also sites that are more centric to artists looking for a platform to post their work. But even though these are available options, what’s incredibly disheartening is that many small businesses have spent years building a business infrastructure using Twitter.
While Threads might be a worthy platform to turn to, for many people it means starting all over again. Just as with the Tumblr exodus, there’s a splintering that occurs when social media sites go bad for users. Contacts are lost, businesses have to be built up again, user interest has to be regained. It’s exhausting for users who don’t simply use social media for keeping in touch or spewing vitriol.
“Our vision is that people using compatible apps will be able to follow and interact with people on Threads without having a Threads account, and vice versa, ushering in a new era of diverse and interconnected networks,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Threads is Meta’s first app envisioned to be compatible with an open social networking protocol – we hope that by joining this fast-growing ecosystem of interoperable services, Threads will help people find their community, no matter what app they use.”
Threads will release in the US and the UK July 6th. But will be delayed in the European Union until EU regulators clarify the bloc’s data privacy laws. And it wouldn’t appear to carry followers over from Instagram, though it’s structure similarly. Threads is its own thing requiring followings to be built over again. In the meantime, we have the supposed cage match between Musk and Zuckerberg to look forward to. Their “anything you can do, I can do better” competition seems to be heating up.
