Threads vs Twitter — The Bull vs Bear Case.

Twitter vs Threads. Image Source — npr.org

I started using Twitter when I was in high school. I started using Threads last week.

Here’s the bull and bear case for Twitter and Threads.

Why Twitter Will Succeed:

1. Twitter has heavyweight content creators — news publishers and influencers. In the US, the top 10% of Twitter users, create 92% of the tweets.
2. Right now the Threads experience lacks curation, and discovery is a little poor.
3. High-quality conversation and community determine retention — Threads doesn’t really have either yet.
4. Meta is bad at innovation, but excellent at growth — Instagram’s most recent updates were all cloned features — Candid stories (BeReal) reels (Tiktok) and stories (Snap) rather than unique innovations.
5. In other words, Meta knows how to scale products, not really build them from scratch (e.g. Poke, Lifestage and Slingshot which were standalone Snap clones).
6. Which is why Threads is somewhere between a standalone app and an extension of Instagram.
7. Twitter came of age when text social apps were king — Wordpress, Tumblr, Facebook.
8. Now, social apps are in the age of the visual. An age that Meta itself has helped to usher in.
9. Text requires more consideration and attention vs images.

Why Threads Will Succeed

1. 100 million users in 7 days — makes Threads one of the fastest-growing products of all time. This is before the European launch.
2. Threads already had 1/3 of Twitter users in 7 days. Instagram has 2 Billion Monthly Active Users. Twitter currently has 368 million Monthly Active Users. Of course, a high percentage of these users will probably churn after the initial shiny object phase.
3. Consumer social is what Zuck does best.
4. Meta are ruthless at execution. Especially when there’s an “enemy” involved.

I think Threads will first win in the under-30s category.

1. Micro-blogging is newish to this category. Essentially, it’s like the comment section of Instagram.
2. Threads is building a house from a foundation, whereas Twitter is trying to stop a house from burning. Threads hasn’t inherited all the issues Twitter has — spam and bots.
3. Threads are intentionally building an anti-Twitter — a kinder, positive culture. And they can because Meta has cut their teeth on years of social experiments and community moderation lawsuits.
4. To me, Threads feels like an early Twitter — a huge focus on friend groups. And as long as your social graph is there, there’s FOMO. There’s more of an incentive to be kind because it’s friend-focused.
5. Because Threads sign-ups are Instagram-account based and not available on PC right now, they largely side-step the bot issue.
6. To succeed, Threads needs a secondary discovery channel — e.g. users share TikToks to Twitter and Facebook which creates a discovery loop. Threads will have to allow some kind of cross-posting across Meta’s ecosystem.
7. The timing is right: Twitter is going through massive changes that aren’t beneficial to Creators — paywalls, and restricted tweet length etc make this the ideal time to take Twitter’s crown.
8. But in order for Threads to succeed there needs to be an incentive for users and creators that goes beyond “a kinder, less chaotic Twitter” as someone put it e.g. Are there discovery opportunities for Creators who have low followers on Instagram accounts?

TLDR; Threads will probably attract a younger, more positive, community-focused audience. Twitter will likely remain a source of news and intellectual debate.

Who do you think will win? What are your thoughts on Threads vs Twitter?