Estelle Keeber runs Leicester marketing consultancy Immortal Monkey, which helps businesses get more out of social media, particularly Instagram. Here she gives her thoughts on Insta-spinoff Threads, the new alternative to Elon Musk’s Twitter:
“With more than 97 million users in the space of just 96 hours, Instagram Threads has now become the fastest growing app since Chat GPT. Within less than 2 hours Threads had hit 1 million users. It took Netflix 3.5 years, Facebook 10 months, Chat GPT 5 days, just to give you some context.
Instagram Threads is an app created by the Instagram Team and is pitched as a text update app that allows you to have public conversation.
Instagram announced on July 5: “Our vision with Threads is to take what Instagram does best and expand that to text, creating a positive and creative space to express your ideas. Just like on Instagram, with Threads you can follow and connect with friends and creators who share your interests.”
The interface of the app itself is very similar to Instagram with the heart (like) button, share icon and option to comment on feed posts however there are many differences between the two apps such as being able to repost content to your feed (not available on Instagram).
As someone who has used both Instagram and Twitter for more than five years, the main difference I can see is the positive tone of Threads.
“In the previous 12-months since Musk’s buyout, Twitter has gone through some huge changes and has lost a lot (predicted at 32 million over two years) of its followers due to technical issues and the spreading of hate speech, this is something that is not happening on Threads, not yet anyway!
When it comes to functionality Threads is easy to use and the layout is a mix between Twitter and Instagram with the feed layout and buttons in similar place to the Instagram app.
Sign up is easy. If you have an Instagram account, you can simply import your information and away you go. Mosseri has also acknowledged that this is only the beginning.
The app is nowhere near perfect, and I predict that in the space of the next 6 months we will see the introduction of features like hashtags and scheduling being introduced which will all help in reaching a more targeted audience.
Will the app be a success? That will remain to be seen however from the standpoint of one of the UKs leading Instagram Experts, I think the app be one to watch and being an early adopter will pay dividends.”
