How can Instagram trends kill Twitter?

Threads has been introduced as a hybrid application of Instagram to compete with Twitter, and within a few hours, 30 million people have registered in it, and according to the latest statistics, Threads now has more than 70 million users!

As the latest meta innovation, Threads aims to topple Twitter, which is now the world’s most popular microblogging platform and has been struggling for some time. Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter, he has caused quite a stir. But Trades has a lot of potential thanks to advanced technology, a built-in user base, and a better balance that will please advertisers.

Threads comes at a time when Twitter is at its lowest point. Musk’s recent move to limit free Twitter accounts to only 600 tweets per day has come under fire. Such a move would probably lead to a decrease in Twitter users and also a decrease in advertising on this platform, and would worsen the crisis that had arisen during Musk’s administration.

All these problems have prepared a good ground for trades. John Wihbey, a professor at Northeastern University who worked as a contract consultant for Twitter for a while, says: “Suddenly you have something unexpected: Meta has entered microblogging and people are discovering it.”

Despite being closely related to Instagram, Threads is an independent application and its big advantage over other Twitter competitors is that it has a huge potential of Instagram users and these people can follow the accounts they follow on Instagram on Threads.

On the other hand, Threads has a team of engineers that networks like Mastodon cannot compete with. Users can also post trending topics directly to their Instagram stories. Instagram CEO Adam Mussery said yesterday that Threads will soon support ActivityPub as Mastodon’s back-end protocol, which will allow Threads users to transfer their followers to another service if they leave or close the app.

Of course, Threads does not yet have all the features of Twitter, and users need an Instagram account to register. On the other hand, Trades is not available in the European Union, which has stricter privacy laws. By default, Threads’ main feed is a combination of posts published by a user’s followers and posts selected by a specific algorithm.

It is not possible to send direct messages in Trades yet, and the order of feeds is algorithmic, not chronological. Threads also lacks a trending topics section and its search feature only shows accounts and is unable to search for specific topics and posts. And most importantly, no ads are displayed in it yet.

But the introduction of Trades has been well received and has not had any problems except for a small interruption. However, microblogging is a risky business and most microblogging platforms are not always profitable. Of course, Trades has the opportunity to take advantage of Twitter’s weakness and strengthen Meta’s brand and attract Twitter advertisers.

The chaos on Twitter has many users looking for something different, although most of them are still not committed to a specific platform, which could be good news for the trend. Tama Leaver, a professor at Curtin University in Australia, said: “If Threads can firmly support all communities and individuals, it will definitely have a chance to win and can easily replace Twitter.”

Twitter has other competitors. As a decentralized platform, Mastodon has recently attracted more users, but user interest has decreased and its number of monthly active users has reached 1.7 million. BlueSky has also recently attracted the attention of users, but this platform is currently not available to all new users. There are also platforms like Post.news and Spill, none of which have emerged as a winning platform. Twitter is still in turmoil eight months after its purchase by Musk.

Instagram also faces challenges. This social network is still involved in issues such as harassment and hate speech, and on the other hand, it is trying to reduce its negative impact on the mental health of teenagers. But Instagram has fared much better than Twitter in many ways, especially since we’ve seen an increase in hateful content on Twitter since Musk took office. That’s why Meta chose to link Threads to Instagram instead of Facebook, because Facebook has older users and doesn’t have a good reputation for political factions and hate speech.

But Meta has a long history of copying its competitors. Instagram Circles is a copy of Tik Tok and Instagram Stories are copied from Snapchat. Trades is almost similar to Twitter and intends to compete with it. One thing to keep in mind is that people don’t use Twitter and Instagram for the same needs.

Twitter allows its users to do some things that Instagram has completely banned. Instagram is primarily about aesthetics, but the images posted there are heavily edited. In contrast, Twitter is a platform for sharing memes and breaking news. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that these two types of platforms can be merged together.

Currently, most of the posts published in Threads are related to this platform itself, and we have to see what features will be added to it in the future and how it will compete with Twitter.

Source: Wired