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Although Threads looks suspiciously like Twitter, there are some important differences. The search experience is limited to searching for accounts, with no ability to locate other people’s messages or search through the topic. There is no trending page, which makes it unlikely to see which issues dominate the discourse. It is clear that he will never update Twitter.
This is because Meta rarely seeks to take the position of its competitor. While Twitter has become popular as a place to stay informed and access critical information, Meta wants Threads to be a gathering place for lifestyle brands and influencers. Instead of a kiosk, Meta is building a new wing of its multi-platform mall. This may sound wonderful to advertisers, but it’s hard to believe that other people will have to limit themselves to the tacky topics that are more productive on Instagram.
Twitter was never the biggest social media platform, and the company was bad enough to make money. But he managed to leverage his exclusive expertise in such a way that he became a vital component of news and current affairs in the 2010s. Politicians, journalists, and other news personalities flocked to the platform, providing unprecedented insight into their influential roles, while also giving them a more direct connection to other ordinary people, and vice versa. Some prominent users, such as President Donald Trump, have become almost inescapable: their tweets have shaped news cycles and public policy. And when big events happened globally or locally, Twitter was the first place to turn for real-time updates from journalists, public agencies, and other ordinary people documenting the events for themselves.
That was the magic of Twitter: While there were many other influencers on the platform, there were many more regular users who shared what they came up with, brought up topics they were passionate about, and started heated discussions (or discussions) with each other. The platform has given other people some collective power. If someone, whether it’s an airline, a celebrity, or just a random user, said or did something wrong, users can join in and force the offender to solve the problem. and yell at the exercise service about it. This made it useful and somewhat addictive.
Monetizing the chaotic stream of consciousness has been tricky for Twitter. It was estimated that 90% of its profits came from advertising in 2021, but even then, it was small enough to cover its costs. These messes may have been resolved through a new leader with a transparent vision to shake up the company. Instead, Twitter was given an agent of chaos: Musk. As the cave deepened, the race to absorb Twitter’s disgruntled user base (and advertisers) intensified.
In a Threads article, Mosseri said the company’s purpose is “not to reposition Twitter” but to “create a public square for communities on Instagram that have never embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter (and other platforms) that are interested in a less angry position for conversations. “platform without eagerness to get into politics or hard news. “
In a way, Threads’ aversion to Twitter’s fluid verbal exchange makes sense: speech on Twitter can become toxic. But before Musk took over, the platform was looking to suppress the worst. Now, Musk has allowed a host of right-wing extremists who had been banned in the past to return to the platform.
Meta has had its own messes with hate speech on Facebook and continues to come under scrutiny for the damage caused by its useless content moderation. But Meta’s solution to the poisonous debate, it seems, is to close it off to any debate. This is rarely a new concept for the company: Last year, Meta replaced Facebook’s main timeline from “News” to just “Feed,” which is partly explained by the fact that the company “reduced its investment in news content” and reduced the resources it invested in its news products. In 2021, it briefly pulled news from Australia as the government began forcing Google and Facebook to compensate local media. And now it threatens to do the same in reaction to similar plans in Canada and California.
Meta’s message is: news content is rarely as lucrative as it once was, or it simply doesn’t value trade-offs. Ultimately, advertisers need to steer clear of controversy, especially at a time when almost anything can be a culture war issue. And after the metaverse fails, Meta is looking for its next money cow.
In 1996, Jennifer S. Light, a generation historian, compared the expansion of online grocery shopping communities to the malls that sprang up in the United States during the current part of the twentieth century. The malls were an attempt to provide a taste area on the main street in the city center for other people who had fled to the suburbs. people of color and homelessness. Even with our nostalgic view of those dying areas, it’s safe to say that grocery malls are the ideal network area. They were not designed for other people; They were designed to generate cash for internal business.
When the internet took off in the 90s, it was first noticed as a public area where other people from all over the world can come in combination and interact. Despite the enthusiasm of the beginning, wrote the light, the rush to make cash of the new generation meant that the Internet was temporarily remodeled to a grocery purchase. And areas for advertisers to spend their cash.
On the one hand, it had a valuable moderating effect. Large corporations don’t need their classified ads to be placed next to particular material, hate speech, or violent images, so if platforms can’t moderate that type of content, the advertising aspect will suffer. The aspect of this preference for white space is that brands also don’t need to accommodate debates about sensitive political issues, conversations that divulge their bad behavior or nude images, long banned on Meta platforms.
This drive to sanitize and restrict conversations to benign discussions and the lowest common denominator reshaped the internet from a common public market where everyone can be placed on a basis equivalent to a commodified, poorly lit shopping mall designed to satisfy the desires of the other people who had the maximum to spend.
The balance between offering a position of free expression and satisfying the desires of advertisers is at the heart of the Threads-Twitter fight.
Although Twitter had long been used for informational purposes, it was also a position where other people could post fairly informally, and that rarely caused disruption. There was tension over how much content would be moderated, not only through users who wanted to remove hate speech, but also through advertisers who were looking for less threat to their brands. He chose to win the company and turn it into a “loose speech” platform. But, as I mentioned before, it doesn’t go down well on the business side of things.
While advertisers abandoned Twitter in reaction to Musk’s changes, Meta learns from Musk’s mistakes and tries to create the brand-friendly, brand-friendly edition of Twitter that the bird site will never manage to become. Threads aims to tap into the good fortune of Instagram, which has thrived amid Facebook’s decline. Threads puts users first: Influencers and celebrities accessed the app early and were relentlessly advertised through its algorithm. To drive engagement, those accounts started by asking their fans questions like their favorite color or whether they liked cookies; However, that’s not the talking point that will keep other people involved for long.
It’s hard to say precisely what Threads’ success will look like. Some analysts estimate that this may increase Meta’s annual profits by $8 billion through 2025. But after the rush for initial registrations, tracking corporations are already seeing a significant drop in user engagement. Ultimately, we’ll decide how Threads works through whether users really need a Twitter-like platform that puts tasteless intake above deep, useful, and lively discussions. If Threads is successful, it may not be the Twitter replacement other people hope for. By providing a money cow app, Threads forgoes everything that made Twitter special: no political debate, no exercise updates, no breaking news.
Will there be any other Twitter? While its disintegration has continued, no app has managed to take its place. This could be because Twitter is a relic of a declining era in online communication, where data sharing may no longer be enough. At a time when platforms are forced to convert their smart religion much faster, an online mall might be the most realistic option.
Paris Marx is a technical editor and host of the podcast Tech Won’t Save Us. He also writes the newsletter Disconnect and is Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation.