It feels like the social media equivalent of that first day of school, logging into Meta’s so-called “friendly” alternative to Twitter, Threads. How do I make the right first impression? Who will introduce me to all the new lingo? Will I make new friends other than those I’m still clinging onto from primary school (Instagram)?
For the uninitiated (seriously, what have you been doing all morning?), the text-based conversation app launched at midnight and had already logged more than 10 million sign-ups in its first few hours of operation — hardly surprising, given the buzz about it over recent weeks. Platforms including Mastodon, BlueSky and Hive have all attempted to rival Twitter in recent years, but Threads feels like the most serious contender yet given that the brains behind it is God of Meta Mark Zuckberg.
Zuckberg (@Zuck, to his new Threads followers) admits it’ll take some time to convert users away from Twitter, but says his ultimate goal is to create a public conversation app “with 1 billion+ people on it” and if current download rates are anything to go by, that might not be as impossible a feat as it sounds. His Twitter/Instagram lovechild is currently available to download in 100 countries (though notably not in the EU) and is linked to Instagram — usernames and blue ticks automatically carry over — meaning it not only looks pretty, but has the potential to quickly assemble a significant line-up of celebrities, athletes, politicians, sports clubs and news outlets who already have Instagram accounts (and more importantly, blue ticks). Kim Kardashian, Oprah Winfrey and the Dalai Lama are among key figures to sign-up so far.
This seamless syncing with Instagram makes signing up temptingly simple. A few clicks to import by pre-saved Instagram details and I’m in, eagerly scrolling this brave new world that looks spookily similar to my Twitter feed, minus the recognisable blue logos and regular updates from Musk. “Just downloaded Threads and it absolutely f***ing sucks,” the billionaire Twitter owner tweeted this morning. He has since deleted the tweet, but did spend his morning publicly liking and reacting to dozens of anti-Threads memes on Twitter, one of the most popular being a meme suggesting Zuckerberg is simply a copy and pasted version of Twitter.
Musk and his fans certainly have a point: the app is undoubtedly similar to the Twitter many of us have grown to know and love over the last 17 years. It looks almost identical, bar a few subtle tweaks to the colours and fonts: a timeline made up of a short text-based pieces of content, like and repost buttons, the ability to quote a thread just like you’d quote a tweet. A few quick terminology tips, for those yet to sign up: retweets are now reposts, tweets are now threads and tweeps are now threeps (yes, really).
As with the latest version of Twitter, feeds aren’t ordered chronologically but according to an algorithm, and the character limit is 500 as opposed to Twitter’s 280. There are some other notable differences, too: no drafts, no direct messaging, no search-by-hashtag function and — my biggest bugbear — no desktop version. Clearly Zuckerberg has never set foot in a newsroom or that would’ve be the first thing he’d introduce if he wanted a serious chance at rivalling Twitter.
Desktop bugbears aside, there are some upsides. Call me a narcissist but there’s something satisfying about getting my blue tick back without having to fork out £66-a-year to Elon Musk. Then again, a blue tick only counts for so much when your profile is suddenly blank. There’s something liberating but also terrifying about starting afresh on a brand new app. What about all those years of carefully-curated content — the DMs, the interactions, that tweet that once got hundreds of retweets and I’d quite like to keep pinned to the top of my profile?
After a couple of minutes, I succumb to the pressure to post an original first Thread and ask the Threadosphere for the best things they’ve noticed about the app over Twitter, receiving a measly three likes and two replies. The responses I do receive are interesting (”no grifters, no bots, only vibes” and “I wish I’d been on Twitter in the early days and feel I get a chance to do so here”), but it’s hardly the viral post I wanted it to be. Looks like I’m going to have to work a bit harder if I want to make it into the cool crowd at this new school.
Reassuringly, I’m clearly not the only one struggling to carve out my new first-day-of-Threads identity. I spend a few hours scrolling (weaving?) my pretty new timeline, my home screen lighting up more regularly than it has in years thanks to a constant pinging of @amy1234 started following yous and @newsalexsmith accepted your follow requests. It feels like some strange social experiment to measure how quickly friends, colleagues and contacts pick up their phone in the morning, the majority admitting they’ve jumped on the Threads bandwagon for FOMO reasons rather than an actual need to find yet another social media platform to scroll.
Meta's new app was built entirely using this keyboard: pic.twitter.com/RoRe6szEO0
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) July 6, 2023
A morning of scrolling identifies some clear new first-day-of-Threads tribes: The Sheep (those testing the water with tentative “hellooos” or “testing, testing, 123s”); The Attention Seekers (those GIF-ing and meme-ing in a desperate attempt to become Big Names On Threads); The Influencers (lycra-clad #inspo types jumping on the chance to grab a new fanbase by posting exactly the same pictures and videos they’re posting on Instagram); The Earnest Tech Bros (sense-of-humourless tech types who sound a bit like bots and post things like ”new app, new opportunities and a new community!”) and The Business As Usuals (those using Threads today just like they were using Twitter yesterday, asking for book recommendations and pinging out #journorequests as though no one’s noticed we’ve all magically switched to an entirely new platform overnight).
So is Threads actually a friendlier version of Twitter, as Zuckerberg suggests? Less than 24 hours in and the verdict so far seems to be mixed. Users can control who mentions them and who can reply to them, which is certainly a good starting point in weeding out trolls. Replies to threads containing specific words can also be filtered out and other users can be unfollowed, blocked, restricted and reported, just like on Twitter, though there does seem to be a strange flaw in that you can’t actually delete your Threads account without deleting your Instagram, too, so if you do decide you don’t like it or the trolling is getting too much, the best you can do is to deactivate your account.
Another key criticism is why the app shows you posts from accounts you don’t follow as well as from those you do, something you can’t (yet) turn off. Meta hasn’t suggested whether it will offer the option of turning this off in the future, but I wonder if it’s all part of the company’s attempt to stop certain users from falling down conspiracy theory rabbit holes and keep their feed broad.
Too broad, though, and surely Threads just becomes another app that’s fun to scroll for a few weeks before the novelty wears off? My first impressions certainly suggest it might struggle to keep the buzz going, given there’s nothing truly unique about it and it has less rather than more functionality than Twitter. Fun as it is to jump aboard a shiny new app where everyone’s showing off with “having me in stitches” puns, memes of Zuckerberg at a sewing machine and new terminology suggestions (long threads should be called yarns, threads within threads should be called a crochet and deleting should be called shredding), I might have to do some serious cleansing of my following lists if some of these influencer-types continue to use Threads as a second platform to post heavily-filtered reels of them making breakfast in tight-fitting athleisure (Threads has a 10 photo-per-post limit, as opposed to Twitter’s four).
Everyone running from Threads back to Twitter after it dies pic.twitter.com/yfkt0C82mE
— L♡V (@Lovwtf) July 6, 2023
Sure, Meta’s algorithm might help to stamp out some of the hate you get on Twitter, but I fear that it might also stamp out some of the real, down-to-earth, non-inspirational content too — crucial if you’re a journalist like me and keen to get a sense of the real, sometimes extreme, views the public have on a certain issue. Can someone at least create a tool to import followers from Twitter to Threads so I don’t have to go through my list manually?
“I don’t get it... is this just Twitter... again?! I don’t even use Twitter” one user, Clare, posted on joining threads this morning. Clare, maybe this isn’t for you then. Then again, we humans are nothing if not FOMO machines. If all the cool kids are actually going to be using this over Twitter as Zuckerberg predicts, it looks like Clare and I had better up our yarning and crocheting. At least for now.
