Thread

   If you see a random string of integer on your crush's instagram profile, you might wonder what they're up to. It's an app called 'Threads" released on this Wednesday, 4th July. If you have a look of the interface and how it works, you will be surprised by the resemblance of it with twitter. Some might of as far as calling it a "twitter killer". YES, it's a fight between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Mask. 

Elon Musk threw shade at threads on a tweet

    It is an app designed specifically for close friends, where they can have private conversations and share their threads. As my friend will call it, 'a more halal version of twitter' as Threads has stricter content policy against explicit nudity. 

    Sometimes I wondered, how long will my social media profile last? Like when will people stop using instagram and move on to the next whatever online platform? Not to be cliché, but I'm really sick of seeing people sharing their glamorous sides on instagram, so when are we going to find other ways to flex our lives on? For most of the people, social media is a place where they find validation and affirmation that they couldn't get from real life. Likes, comment, followers constantly give people the positive feedback they need, as well as entertainment. Meta is a fastest growing social media platform ever, hitting 10 millions users in the first seven hours it was released. It is an app designed specifically for close friends, where they can have private conversations and share their threads. As my friend will call it, 'a more halal version of twitter' as Threads has stricter content policy against explicit nudity. 

    The problem with tweeter now is it has put far too many apps that it should be in their app. Twitter charges people to be verified, so you literally end up in a situation where you've got a ton of fake Elon Musk account, which is paid to be verified. They've just limited the number of tweets that you can view in a day unless you pay to increase that limit. To most of the user, twitter has felt like no longer a homely platform. So threads is basically designed to be the opposite of that and to capitalise on this downward spiral sentiment that lots of people have towards twitter, meta has made sure that they've launched with ZERO ads. 

    

A parody account that somehow got through the verification process

    The big brain marketing behind threads also contribute to the reason of achieving massive numbers of sign ups in just a couple of days. They give people on the outside a major fear of missing out: you actually get numbered based on how quickly you register for a thread account, literally like getting ranked in a race.

    However, threads is missing in a lot of features, such as the trending topics. This is the feature that actually makes Twitter different to other platform; it's news first. You go on to twitter to learn about what's happening with the world and what people think about it. This is opposed to Instagram, which is more like "what are my friends up to", or what it's used to be. Now it's more like another version of TikTok.

    In the future, is it possible that Threads might kill Twitter? Very possibly. Twitter's approaching 500 million users but Instagram has 2.35 billion and even though threads is a very blatantly a direct copy of twitter, meta has proved that they can make it way better than Twitter, like what they've done before. Facebook killed Myspace, Instagram killed snapchat just basically after copying their features and doing it better.

    The simplest way of helping twitter to win this war is, quite frankly, integrating twitter with threads. Twitter's algorithm could incorporate Threads content into its recommendation system, as well as allowing users to share threads from the Threads app directly into Twitter. Threads could also incorporate popular Twitter hashtags and trends into its interface, making it easier for users to discover interesting topics. For Twitter content creator that wouldn't want to lose the followers it has built all these years, Threads could integrate their profiles with Threads profile, as long as their followers are on threads.

    Reflection: Despite meta is notorious of making money from profiling their users, tracking their activities then sell their information to advertisers, it's still possible that meta sees this not as a way to repeat the same mistakes but a way to correct for them.



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