The release of Threads is one of the hot topics of the moment. Available since the middle of this week in a good part of the world (although at the moment in the European Union it is only possible to see its contents, not register or, of course, publish), the first numbers that have been reaching us speak of a stellar premiere, with Millions of users creating their profiles during the first 24 hours of their existence. And, of course, a very present element in the conversation is Twitter.
Threads’ inspiration on Twitter is so obvious it’s undeniable. Of course, it is not the first case, because over time we have seen many other services that offer a clearly similar interface and functions. From the already veteran Mastodon to BlueSky, created by Jack Dorsey who, as you know, was one of the founders of Twitter, the Twitter model has been reproduced over and over again for very simple reasons: part of a very successful approach and design, and it is also already familiar to its users, so the jump to other services from Twitter is tremendously easy.
Twitter is not at its best. The erratic and incomprehensible management to which the social network has been subjected since it became controlled by Elon Musk has caused a drop in user interest and advertiser confidence, and measures such as limiting the maximum daily number of messages that can see a user do not help in this regard. And that’s why Meta’s timing for the release of Threads seems so apt.
But let’s go to the question with which this article is raised, do Threads really pose a threat to Twitter? There are reasons to think so and others to think no.These matters are never that simple. What we can be clear about is that, today, Threads is closer to threatening Twitter than any other social network has ever been, and there are several reasons for this.
When we talk about social networks, we always mention Twitter among the main ones, and this is because over the years it has achieved great recognition. However, if we go to the numbers, what position do you think it occupies in the global ranking of social networks (in the broadest definition of the concept, yes) by volume of active users? Do you think it’s in the top three? Maybe five? In any case, it has to be in the top ten, right? Well, as we can see in this Buffer article, which uses such reliable sources as Statista, SEMRush and CNBC, Twitter, with its 238 million active users per month, occupies the fourteenth position. Yes, there are thirteen services ahead.
It is even more interesting to compare this data with that of Instagram, which, as you know, is the social network to which Threads is associated, and which therefore has all the potential to transfer its users to the new network. And how is Instagram positioned in said ranking? Well, with its 2,000 million monthly active users, it occupies the fourth position in the table. Ten positions above, and almost ten times the volume of users. And this becomes even more interesting if we take into account that two of the three positions that are above Instagram are occupied by other Meta services, Facebook, in first position, with 2,960 million monthly active users, and WhatsApp in third with a figure practically identical to that of Instagram. Only Google manages to compete at the top of the table, with YouTube’s 2.2 billion monthly active users.
Twitter is great, but history has already shown us that nothing is too big to fail (the famous “too big to fail“), and Twitter is facing a social network with the potential to multiply its user volume by 10. This explains us that, unlike his reaction to other “clones” that have appeared in the past, which would be comparable to that of a cow waving its tail to scare away flies, on this occasion he has become serious and He threatens to sue Meta, which he even accuses of having obtained confidential information from Twitter for the start-up of Threads.
Twitter is facing its most powerful rival, and it is also doing so at one of its worst moments, but beware, this does not mean that the war is won or lost, depending on which side we are reading from. Several factors play in favor of Twitter, starting with its enormous degree of consolidation among users, who in many cases have a history of years of publications, interactions and contacts that they do not want to lose. If it were possible to take all these elements and automatically transfer them to a new service, the situation would be very different, but since this is not the case, Twitter plays with the trick of what its users have already experienced.
Another important aspect is that Twitter is much more lax than Instagram (and therefore Threads) when it comes to what can and cannot be posted. Thus, any user who wants to publish content under the NSFW label (Non Safe/Suitable For Work, which is a delicate way of saying that it is something that you do not want the rest of the world to know that you are seeing), will remain tied to Twitter, Well, in Threads you will surely find that your content (or the type of content you like) is removed, and even that the accounts that publish it are punished for it.
So is Threads a threat to Twitter? In short, yes, yes it is. Now, both social networks have their own strengths, so what will make the difference is the way they use them during the contest that has already begun. And that tells us that, if everything works as it should, we are going to live a very interesting period seeing how both services fight to become the reference for microblogging social networks.
