Meta’s Twitter competitor, Threads, releases on the 6th. It has a very similar interface to Twitter and provides roughly the same experience. You can login with your Instagram account and migrate followers to the platform. This will give them a huge network boost right off the start and a much faster ramp up period than other social networks. For some numbers, Instagram has around 2 billion monthly active users and is notoriously difficult to create new accounts on without providing phone # or in some cases even photos of your ID. Twitter has around 300m monthly active users and Musk himself said at least 20% are bots. A relatively small percentage of Instagram users migrating to Threads would make them instantly bigger than Twitter. And we know the creators go where the users are. It’s also worth noting there are rumors that Threads is based on ActivityPub and could potentially serve as a common front end for other open social media platforms like Mastsdon.
I'm more curious how this does in some other countries where Twitter is way more popular
What Threads needs is the journalists and politicians to move over. IG and Twitter are very different user bases. I remember when Twitter started, for whatever reason journalists and wannabes took to it like fish to water. Also I hope meta is ready for the onslaught of fake accounts. Who wants that headache on day 1?
I think Meta is better positioned to handle bot accounts than Twitter ever was. They’ve been dealing with this problem on Facebook and Instagram forever. It can actually be quite difficult to create new accounts for their platforms if you trip one of their conditions. Often requiring email, phone, and ID verification.
Every large instagram pages comments are filled with nothing but bots.
Threads will take over
One is the major user group that gives massive relevance to Twitter is govt officials, politicians, bureaucrats, thought leaders, etc. who use Twitter to dispense, discuss, debate and further societal discourse. Normally, these users are not on Instagram. If Threads is successful in getting this group of users on their platform then it can definitely trump Twitter.
Look at what insta did to Snapchat. It can happen happen especially when Elon is doing his best to make unforced errors
I vote that Twitter kills itself and Threads remains irrelevant.