Talk about striking while the iron’s hot. Elon Musk and the folks at Twitter HQ decided it was a good idea to cap the daily usage of Twitter posts for non-paying users. It was kind of a strong-arm tactic and they might have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those meddling kids over at Instagram and their Threads app.
Miraculously, Threads was ready to launch only two days after Twitter decided to moonlight as an extortionist and cap usage. Maybe this was the launch date all along, so perhaps this was serendipity with the stars aligning to ensure a successful birth. They say success happens when opportunity meets preparedness and boy was Instagram prepared. No matter what created the opportunity, they were ready for it.
The expectation was that Threads would launch on the 6th of July but I was surprised to swipe through my phone at 10pm EST and find the app right there ready to use. When I opened it up, the first posts I was greeted with reminded me of someone still in love with their ex. Everybody on Threads was talking about Twitter. It was like the best thing about Threads was that it wasn’t Twitter, which is a bit political, but I digress. Now, about Threads… there’s really nothing special about it.
Key Differences Between Twitter and Threads
250 Character limit vs 500 Character Limit
Threads limit you to 500 Characters so you can be more expressive, but longer Tweets is why you use Threads on Twitter.
Follow button added to profile photos
On just about all social media platforms, the feed is designed as if you’re only getting content from the accounts you follow. As a result, there’s not much of a need to clutter the page with follow buttons. As they all work to keep you on their platforms by showing you popular content rather than just stuff the people you follow post, you get stuff from people you don’t follow. Threads make it easier to follow users from the feed than Twitter.
Integrates with Instagram
You have the ability to share posts from Threads to your Instagram stories which could simplify the process of creating content for Publishers.
Glaring misses
No way to tell if anyone saw anything you posted
There is no measurement for anything you post. If no one engages, there’s no way to know if anyone even saw it. I tried posting the same thing to both platforms and got some engagement on Twitter but none on Threads. That’s something I expect with Threads being new, but I would have liked to see how many accounts it reached.
Wrap Up
It’s early in the process so maybe they do some things that change everything. For now, I don’t see a reason to use Threads. The only real reason is political and personal. People that hate Elon Musk will love and use Threads. People that hate the Far-Right ideology will love and use Threads because many on the Far-Left now view Twitter as a Far-Right platform. It’s interesting watching all of this unfold as Twitter threatens to sue and whatnot, but I’m sticking with Twitter, for now…
