🤘🤘 Where Does Threads Fit In?

Meta’s Threads is the fastest growing app in history of the Internet and most of the marketers are rejoiced by having a chance at the clean slate.

The question is, how does it fit into the crowded market of social media.

The king of short-form posts, Twitter has had its fair share of issues by the wildcard new owner, Elon Musk. The dude is a polarizing figure who’s running the platform as his personal kingdom, introducing new features, and adding laws and regulations as he pleases.

These changes are skewing into negatives:

• massive layoffs

• Introducing a paid “blue checkmark” badge

• Locking Twitter API behind a steep paywall ($42,000 per month - lol wtf!?) - can you imagine dropping half a mil for a functionality that used to be free

• Limitations on number of tweets viewed

But also some good things:

• Longer posts

• Recommendation engine

• Censorship removal

Ofc, these changes caused a huge upset with individuals as well as with companies who relied on their API to fuel their business. Twitter is becoming a wild west and as product it’s unpredictable.

One company’s troubles sparks the opportunity for other players to join the arena and captured disillusioned users in search of a new home.

Mastadon and BlueSky are two Twitter “clones” that pride themselves as decentralized servers - a lot like Discord. But they failed to get traction.

Growth Doesn’t Equal Success

Meta’s solution “Threads” which sits under Instagram, got an ridoncolous growth in few days, hitting $100M in 5 days.

The way they achieved that number was relatively easy. Because Threads is a subcomponent of Instagram, anyone that wanted to sign-up for Threads had a one click tap (tap cos it’s only on mobile) option to follow every Instagram follow under their account.

So if you followed 500 IG accounts, you could auto-follow all 500 IG accounts the moment they signed up for Threads.

If you think of it, that’s amazing tactic since populating a place is one of the mandatory checkpoints for driving engagements.

But there’s another high growth app that died out almost as fast as it has grown - Clubhouse. Clubhouse had sneaky viral elements in their app including psychological tricks like using invitation only program, and influencer-baited spaces.

But the app didn’t make much sense since it was littered with heavy friction features - no recordings of chats, non-moderated chat sessions were polluted by noice by having too many participants, and my personal biggest pet-peeve you had to present at the exact time to listen in.

Too much work.

Also, the feature has been copied by the all the bigs - Twitter, Facebook, and Spotify. I’m not sure how the social live audio is doing now, but because of same feature friction points as Clubhouse I’ve never joined any of audio spaces.

What’s Threads Has to Offer that is New

Which brings me to this point - Threads has a massive user base (that was shrewdly borrowed from Instagram) but what will they do to keep the engagement and retention healthy?

The way I see it, it just seems like a Meta’s version of Twitter for people who:

• a) Are disappointed by all the Twitter changes

• b) Offer a card-blanche for individuals and brands to build something quickly as the first arrivers

• c) Another channel for creators and brands to use as a distribution channel and… just see what happens

I’m falling into the last group. Mostly because I try to restrict my time to be consumed by social media (I still don’t have TikTok), and at this point there’s a major friction point for using mobile-only app for content distro.

I’m sure in a few weeks, the Threads are going to be available on most social media management platform (Buffer, HootSuite, MeetEdgar, SocialBee, etc…) where I’m gladly going to repost my Twitter posts.

The other caveat about jumping on the Threads bandwagon is the fact that my audience on Instagram is completely different than my Twitter on. I’m using IG for mostly personal connections and not for attracting more business.

Which brings me to possibly the biggest opportunity Threads might have…

The One Type of Creators Threads

Brands, Retail and Influencers.

If you look at the Instagram accounts with massive following, they are gym-shark wearing fitness influencers, meme accounts (i love you dogsofinstagram) and retail companies (again check GymShark).

The gap that Threads is filling is the opportunity to monetize these IG accounts more efficiently.

AFAIK, Instagram is incredibly painful for any type of conversions. Apps like Linktree or Later were satellite widgets where IG owners could leverage their audience and lead them to other places (personal website, shop, course squeeze page, other social media,…).

Instagram posts were bereft of any links in the descriptions and communication hasn’t flowed well because of the restricting format.

Threads has the opportunity to solve this issue:

It will allows IG users to:

• expand their offerings in written format

• have better communication flow between the brand and the user

• connect and network with other Threads account

• add additional rich media and links to posts

All in all, it’s too early to tell, and I’m curios to see what strategy Meta will do to use this opportunity: die like Clubhouse or win like TikTok

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Btw - I’m on Threads here. I’d love to connect with you!

Head-to-Head

Well-done direct comparison pages are my guilty pleasure.

Here’s a look at Jocko’s product launch - Hydrate.

Jocko Willink is an icon of masculinity, discipline, hard work, and big proponent for simple and American-made quality products.

Check how his product positions itself against an established hydration solution.

1st Fold

• Short sentences, clear message.

• Direct comparison against the incumbent in the hydration market

2nd Fold - Feature Comparison

• Most important information up top (sugar intake, ingredient quality)

• Feature rich (lots more green ticks on Jocko’s Hydrate option)

• Summary with main benefits (Feature in order to get Benefit)

The product clearly understands the audience.

Spicy Memes

Andy’s 30-Day CI Program

If you’re not in Andy’s Healthy Competition community you’re missing out. The head dude and CI master at ClickUp offered his course 30-Day CI Program course for free.

Me and my team at Grow and Scale took the Competitive Playbook course (highly recommended) way, way back in the day, and we consider it a fundamental piece on understanding CI when it comes to tech products.

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Have a wonderful week! Don’t forget to pet your dog!

🤘🤘

d.