Threads is like joining Twitter all over again, just less lonely
- Threads feels a lot like joining Twitter in its early days.
- There are no rules or guidance, while enthusiastic users try to make sense of the platform.
I still remember the day I joined Twitter. Fifteen years ago, just a month into my journalism school and by the end of our online journalism module, most of us students had signed up for a Twitter account. It was a cool thing to do. I felt like the coolest kid in the class for being able to grab a Twitter handle with my first name while a number of my classmates struggled to find a handle.
Fifteen years later, Threads, the newest social media platform from Meta, has brought a sense of deja vu. Threads feels like the early days of Twitter. There are no rules, the guidance is vague, and there are a bunch of very enthusiastic users trying to make sense of the platform.
But it differs from Threads in one important way: Early Twitter was also...kind of lonely. When I joined, I followed a bunch of people and no one seemed to follow me back. I tweeted about everything and used all the right hashtags but struggled to garner followers. It was only when I started my first journalism job and had a few bylines under my belt that the followers started adding up.
Threads feels a lot more vibrant. If you are an avid Instagram user then you have a network already. You know your followers, you know what they post, and you have a good starting point. Threads lets you bring this community along, like a support group.
There are signs of strong initial interest more generally. The app, as of Friday morning, hit 30 million signups in its first day. Whether people stick around (and, in time, click any ads) remains to be seen.
Much of Threads' activity right now seems to involve mocking Twitter, as my colleague Hasan Chowdhury notes, as the site has done a few unpopular things like rate-limit users, start charging for its API, and charge for verification. Like a lot of others on Threads right now, the new app harks bark to brighter days of early Twitter — hopefully the calm doesn't turn into chaos.