Can Threads Replace Twitter?

Last week, Meta released Threads, its competitor to Twitter. Threads has been launched as a standalone app based on Instagram.

Not the political type?

Threads plans to stay away from politics and hard news. As experiences of both Facebook and Twitter show, conversations around politics attract negativity and scrutiny that are best avoided.

Bit ironical, since it were political conversations that catapulted Twitter to its current popularity. In its initial years, Twitter was looked down as a fad. It was its role in the surprise political wins of Donald Trump (in the US) and Narendra Modi (India) that changed how it was seen. The wild west era of social media came to grinding halt. Calls for regulatory oversight increased.

Suddenly, ‘fake news’ became a serious concern. Social media platforms were asked to take editorial responsibility for the content generated on their platforms. But this only invited further scrutiny. For, the social media platforms have always self-identified as tech platforms. By exercising editorial control, they risk being classified as a media company. And a media company is liable for the content published on their platform. In short, when a tech company exerts editorial oversight, it can no longer enjoy immunity from the legal consequences arising from its content.

That probably explains why Instagram boss Adam Mosseri thinks, “There are more than enough amazing communities — sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment, etc. — to make a vibrant platform without needing to get into politics or hard news.”

Branding vs Category

Brand identity is something that helps ‘identify‘ and ‘distinguish‘ a brand in the consumer’s mind. As a corollary, branding efforts are only required when the market is full of easily-substitutable alternatives. When the distinction between your product and competition is not visibly evident to the consumers.

When your product category is one its kind, branding is not required.

• Consider ‘Uber’. Such is the perceptual clarity it inspires that we still see startups that promise ‘uberization‘ of a new market space.
• Take Ikea. No matter how crowded the furniture marketplace, Ikea represents a potent mix of low price, sustainability, form, function, and quality.
• Or Tesla. Despite zero advertising, it has an annual revenue of $86.035B as of 2023.

In the digital markets, more particularly, winner takes it all.

This is probably why even a company of Google’s stature had to repeatedly bite dust in the social media category. They first introduced Google Waves. Later, they had a Twitter-like Google Buzz. Then, with much fanfare they introduced Google+. Google+ also had to be closed finally in 2019.

The problem is more about ‘positioning’ than ‘branding’. In the consumer mind, Facebook had earned a space of a platform that connects you with friends and family. When a category leader serves its consumer-base well, it’s hard to wean away a chunk of them.

Twitter succeeded because it came up as micro-blogging platform, to which there was no equivalent in the marketplace. It made it easier for common people to share their views (simple UI), to search for conversations (using hashtag), and check the pulse of people on an ongoing development.

It introduced, pun intended, ‘threads’, a new content format unlike any other in the past. It made it easy for people to tell a story in the form of a series of tweets. But more importantly, it allowed updates on a specific story across a long timeline.

Threads seems to be betting on Twitter’s “volatility” and “unpredictability” under Elon Musk. But short of Twitter imploding, that’s a tough bet. To succeed, Threads must offer a radically new experience of public conversations. It isn’t enough to be Twitter+.

Threads must aim to create a new category than compete in a space designed by a rival (and bound to inherently advantage the rival that created it).