image copyrightReuters
Article informationAuthor, By James ClaytonRole, Technology Journalist, BBC North America
9 hours ago
Threads first impressions: Can Meta afford to do this? Isn’t that kind of plagiarism?
The application looks just like Twitter. The character limit, the repost, the stream. It’s all incredibly familiar.
Mark Zuckerberg says millions of people signed up in the first few hours. You should always be skeptical when a technology company boss announces the number of users who have registered on a platform. But it looks like a lot of people are already using it.
Part of that is because she’s linked to Instagram. If you’re already on Instagram, you have the option to “follow all” your Instagram followers when you sign up.
This option allows you to have a ready-made list of followers, but it also means that you will likely gain followers as your Instagram friends sign up.
Zuckerberg is resourceful and explains why big tech companies have a huge advantage over smaller ones.
Meta does not create an application from scratch. She benefits from her billion followers on Instagram, which gives her a huge boost.
Platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon haven’t had that luxury. They started with zero users.
But whether that’s “fair” or not, Mr. Zuckerberg doesn’t care. He’s successfully copied other apps before (Reels is a TikTok clone) and he’s happy to do it again.
Knowing the power of fame, Mr. Zuckerberg has also used celebrities on Instagram and has managed to feature some on Threads, such as Shakira and Gordon Ramsay.
Mark Zuckerberg will be delighted with the enthusiasm generated by the application. When it comes to social media, it’s all about the network effect. The more users there are, the better the application performs.
When it comes to social media, the network effect can create a kind of tipping point. When so many of your friends or people you want to hear from are on a platform, you kind of feel compelled to join.
It is very, very difficult to create a network effect on a social media platform. But when it works, it really does. The reverse is also true: when communities leave a social media platform, they can do so quickly – and that can be devastating. Think Myspace or Bebo.
Now let’s get to some of the problems with Threads. The most important thing is that there is only one stream, not two.
Twitter has a recommendation feed and an option to only see tweets from people you follow.
Threads has a feed that mixes your followers and content it thinks you’ll be interested in. It could get boring.
Threads doesn’t seem to have desktop functionality yet – it doesn’t work well on your computer. That’s a shame.
There doesn’t seem to be any trending information, so it’s hard to see what’s going viral.
There is also no messaging feature, which Twitter offers.
And when it comes to verification, users can still purchase their blue ticks for a monthly fee, as is the case with Twitter.
Although many people have signed up and the site is (sort of) popular, it is still much smaller than Twitter. Your messages won’t get as far and be seen by as many people (although the app is only a few hours old).
image copyrightJaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images
image caption,
Mark Zuckerberg posts are seen on the Instagram Threads app in this photo illustration on July 06, 2023 in Warsaw, Poland
Mark Zuckerberg described the app as an “initial release” – and that’s what it appears to be. The essential is well done. But for now, it is an application that does not provide thrills.
That said, the Meta boss will be pleased with how things have gone so far. Given the years of bad press he’s endured, he’s reinventing himself as the adult in the room – the sensible tech billionaire who wants a user-friendly social media platform.
You could say that made Elon Musk angry. “Thank goodness they are run in such a healthy way,” he tweeted sarcastically on Monday.
But while Mr. Zuckerberg feared that disgruntled Twitter users would reject Meta’s offer, it appears for now that those fears were unfounded.
And if so, with an app that works perfectly well, even spectacularly, it could be a real problem for Mr. Musk.
2023-07-08 23:10:06
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