Watch out Twitter meta launched their new text based app
threads yesterday, letting people say what they want to
say and how they're feeling in 500 characters or less
. So for more on this Twitter copycat, we
should say, let's bring in our senior reporter Michelle
Castillo. So Michelle, you know how much I'm
obsessed with threads, but what do we know so
far about it? Well, Threads is finally here
, Baker as you pointed out and it looks remarkably
similar to the early days of Twitter. So the
app which was developed by Instagram is meant to focus
on text although and videos are allowed about 100 countries
had access as of yesterday. So you have to
log in via your Instagram account at this time and
you can post up to 500 characters and up to
five minutes of video. Eventually the company has plans
to make it part of the activity pub protocol which
would give it open source capabilities. This means people
can study and analyze the code for full transparency or
use it across apps. So other micro blogging apps
like Macedon offer this feature and it's very popular.
Yes. So let's talk about how the launch is
going so far. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg has
been giving results and of how it's been going pretty
frequently here. Yeah. In the first seven hours
of CEO Mark Zuckerberg said 10 million people had signed
up for threads and as of this afternoon, over
30 million people have signed up and, you know
, he's already active on it in a response to
a user asking if threads can become bigger than Twitter
. Zuckerberg posted quote, it'll take some time.
But I think there should be a public conversations app
with 1 billion plus people on it. Twitter has
had the opportunity to do this but hasn't nailed it
. Hopefully we will. Now there are a lot
of glitches at launch. For example, I've had
issues automatically following people. Although it said I imported
all my followers. It's also very limited at this
time, you can just post repost like or reply
at this point. But Instagram did say it will
add new features based on user demand. Yeah,
right now, you also can't send any DM messages
. You can't use thread on desktop. You can
only use it on mobile, but obviously a lot
of glitches and things that they'll work on throughout all
of this. But I guess this gets to the
larger question here. A lot of companies Blue Sky
, others have tried. Could this actually be the
Twitter killer here? Well, meta hopes so and
it's capitalizing on the discontent many Twitter users are feeling
right now. So the number of global Twitter users
is expected to decline 16% in the US from May
2023 until 2025 according to insider intelligence. And with
changes like making many of the feature subscription only and
limiting the number of tweets, you can see a
day. It makes sense why even Instagram Ceo Adam
acknowledged in an interview with the New York Times that
threads was launched now. So it could take advantage
of the discontent with Twitter. But one big benefit
for influences, influencers and brands on threads is they
can import their users, digital and social agency,
high key enterprise. Ceo Luke says this is a
really good thing. You're given the opportunity to have
the exact same handle as your Instagram user name on
threads and as well as uh even followers basically coming
over onto threads from Instagram, which I think would
be massive in and showcasing the connection between each social
media platform. And I I think that that's the
future of uh these big social media platforms like ee
even if Facebook, Instagram and threads were all connected
with one another where your followers were shared between all
three of them would be massive because uh creators spent
so much time building their social media audience on one
specific platform, having an already built in follower base
could tip the scales towards joining threads. And remember
I talked about that plan to make threads open source
. Well, it could also make it easier for
accounts to share content across different platforms. So you
don't have to repost or share things from scratch.
But Elon Musk doesn't seem so convinced the platform will
see success over Twitter. When asked about that,
he posted quote, it is indefinitely preferable to be
being attacked by strangers on Twitter than indulge in the
false happiness of hide the paint Instagram. He's also
deleted his Instagram account. Now, one big issue
Twitter has faced is negative and hateful sentiment on the
platform. This isn't to say that Instagram doesn't face
these issues as well, but meta is coming strong
out of the gate saying it is working on these
issues before they get out of hand. Instagram has
invested$16 billion since 2016 seen in making sure its
platforms are not toxic so this could bring in advertising
dollars especially since many companies. Trust me a platform
. Yeah, and we should note Linda Yarina who
is the new CEO over at Twitter earlier this morning
, tweeted that we built the Twitter community and that
is irreplaceable. Um So clearly she's already trying to
do a lot of the uh clean up on this
as well. Michelle Castillo, thank you so very
much for that update next up.