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Meta Platform’s new Threads has huge momentum after its launch Wednesday night but whether it can keep those users on its new social platform that seeks to unseat Twitter is the big question.
On Wall Street, Meta
META,
shares were see-sawing Thursday morning, after the company launched Threads a bit earlier than expected. Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Threads that 30 million people have created accounts on Threads. “Feels like the beginning of something special, but we’ve got a lot of work ahead to build out the app.”
“The key now is how do you sustain that velocity, and ensure that these users are coming back to the platform,” said Mike Proulx, an analyst with Forrester Research. “That is the far bigger challenge.”
Meta was able to leverage its huge Instagram user base and its massive amount of data centers to make the signing-up process fairly easy for Instagram users. Forrester also conducted a quick poll of 427 adults, with 34% saying they don’t want to join Threads because they don’t want another social media platform.
Proulx highlighted a few issues with Threads that many new users were also complaining about, such as seeing the feeds of strangers that you don’t know or follow, and an algorithmic order of feeds, versus a chronological one on Twitter.
In addition, some were looking for a way to import Twitter followers, trending topics, translations and hashtags, to name a few other issues. Threads is also currently mobile-only, just as Instagram was initially. Meta did not respond to a question about whether there are plans for a desktop version of Threads, which is another major draw of Twitter right now, for some, especially office workers.
Even with all its issues, the scale that Threads had achieved in its first few hours was still stunning. “I don’t think any social media platform is going to be able to scale up like this, unless they are purchased by a big social media company,” said Luke Lintz, chief executive of HighKey Enterprises, a digital marketing company. He agreed, though, that currently, what users are seeing is a bit convoluted. “It’s not just your followers, there is no way to separate your followers, you’re just seeing every post.”
Wall Street analysts don’t expect Threads to immediately generate revenue, as Meta initially keeps ads off the service. Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski said in a note to clients that Threads could potentially generate incremental revenue between around $800 million and $3.9 billion, based on a U.S.-only launch for now, a 0.5% to 2.5% upside compared to his current 2025 revenue estimates.
Threads is coming at a difficult time for Twitter, after Elon Musk recently initiated more changes, including a change that limits the number of Tweets that non-paying users can see on a daily basis. Meta says it is trying to create a less-toxic platform, as users have continued to leave Twitter. According to Insider Intelligence, Twitter has lost about 10 million users since 2022 and now has about 364 million users. Musk acquired the company late last year for $44 billion and took it private.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, said in one of his early Threads that Meta is “hoping this can be an open and friendly platform for conversations.”
Right now, it appears that Twitter could remain the voice for conservatives, while Threads ends up as an alternative or more liberal voice. “I predict it [Twitter] will become more conservative in terms of its user base for a whole host of reasons…and Threads will be an alternative to Twitter,” Proulx of Forrester said.
While Musk and Zuckerberg continue to engage in talks about having a real-life cage fight between the two tech CEOs, the virtual cage fight between Twitter and Threads is now on.
