Threads: First Thoughts

A few of my initial thoughts on ‘Threads’. Its quite exciting, a launch of a new social media from such a big company. Have a read, let me know if you agree/ disagree, or share the same excitement.

🧠 Threads; first thoughts:
A really good alternative to Twitter. I think this is timed really well to essentially put the final nail in the coffin for Twitter; it would take something pretty special for Twitter to come back from this. So far, the feed is a nice mix of people/companies I know and the feeling of people watching. It is really quite exciting to see a brand new product grow and develop. I was hoping Twitter could redeem itself, but this is the next best thing, I suppose.

🛑 Safety:
The hidden words option is a nice touch as the main feed seems to be pretty algorithmic, so this is a great way to tone down some of the negative content that you are being shown.

📖 Content:
The main feed is mainly filled using the algorithm. It feels similar to a text version of TikTok, which is quite exciting as it gives a lot of opportunity to become ‘viral’ and increase your following. It’s also quite entertaining and brings a lot of controversy. There are no hashtags, so I presume the algorithm will be similar if not the same as Instagram’s, which I believe is moving away from hashtags and focusing on keywords. This could have been intentional with the plan of launching Threads.

💲 Ads:
Ads are currently not live on Threads; however, I am presuming that it will fall under the normal Meta Ads Manager. I suspect that the targeting won’t be any different, and there will still be the same level of restrictions with health-based adverts (but I am well used to that now).

📣 Audience & Tone of voice:
It is hard to gauge the tone of voice at the moment and whether it sits more towards the professional end or the ‘Twitter cesspit’ end. As the user numbers grow, it will start to shape itself a bit more and show us what it is about. At the moment, it’s just a mix of ‘first thread’ and ‘omg I got to 10k followers’, so you can’t really judge it just yet.

🖥 Interconnectivity:
Or ‘decentralisation,’ these are fancy buzzwords that I am quite familiar with in the clinical trial industry. The interconnectivity between Instagram is a nice feature. Threads is also planning to connect to Mastodon and WordPress. It will be interesting to see how useful this will actually be when launched. I probably need to read up a bit more on the benefits of this feature.