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Is Threads Better Than Twitter? Industry Weighs In

 

By Nerly Shammah Jul 08, 2023

 

Elon Musk paid approximately $44 billion for Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg just hit copy and paste - says a parody account of Musk on Twitter.

 

 

Mark Zuckerberg launched a Twitter competitor called Threads on July 4th and is reportedly controlling over 70 million users already. 

 

The Meta founder has been known for sitting on the throne when it comes to the social media business with Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all having billions of users worldwide.

 

The launch of threads has gotten people to ask questions about its potential when placed up against Twitter. 

 

The majority of Twitter users and influencers have pointed out the fact that the Meta CEO has always been a copying machine, citing Meta's move to integrate features like statuses on Facebook - a Snapchat idea - Reels on Instagram and Facebook - a TikTok idea and now launching a replica of Twitter tied to Instagram. 

 

Notably, Meta isn't the only company to be in the business of copying new features from other successful platforms, YouTube adopted "short videos with YouTube Shorts" after seeing the success of it with TikTok. 

 

However, Meta is popularly said to be a giant in the space on a quest to centralize the social media ecosystem with its now quite interoperable social media platforms. 

 

Since the rebranding of Facebook as a parent company to Meta following the hype surrounding The Metaverse - which the company failed terribly at delivering - the social media giant has been on the quest to make all its platforms incredibly interoperable with each other, a feature web3 enthusiasts would be quite appreciative of. 

 

Is Threads Better Than Twitter?

 

The majority consider threads an added platform for advertisers to mine user data in order to try selling them things, not many vote on it replacing Twitter.

 

Threads are currently tied to Instagram, thus people need an Instagram account to sign up. 

 

Was this a move to bring more users from Twitter to Instagram? Maybe, maybe not. It is however said that it is meant to give Instagram users that never used Twitter a text-based platform for microblogging.

 

However, Threads privacy policy has also been a great concern for users and has gotten key industry players who advocate for a decentralized social network, Jack Dorsey tweeted after the launch:

 

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"All your threads are belong to us" posted with a screenshot of Threads privacy policy detailing the collection of data on the Meta platform. 

 

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On July 8, Jack Dorsey also quoted a tweet talking about Twitter clones saying:

 

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We wanted flying cars, instead we got 7 Twitter clones

 

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Amongst these 7 clones were Bluesky a supposedly decentralized alternative to Twitter by Jack Dorsey and Mastodon, a federation of social spaces functioning via individual protocols to enable decentralization.

 

Even more so, the numbers on Twitter clones are far too many to count, notably, projects like Leofinance have taken the game a bit further, merging microblogging with medium-style blogging on a blockchain network, rewarding creators with cryptocurrencies due to the power of tokenization. 

 

Threads on the other hand has no distinctive feature other than being exactly what Twitter is but with a far easier-to-navigate interface.

 

So far, in addition to most individuals calling out privacy concerns about Threads and others simply seeing it as an added platform, Twitter is reportedly working down a lawsuit against Threads. 

 

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Twitter has threatened to sue Meta Platforms (META.O) over its new Threads platform in a letter sent to the Facebook parent's CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Twitter's lawyer Alex Spiro.

 

Spiro, in his letter, accused Meta of hiring former Twitter employees who "had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information," News website Semafor first reported.

 

"Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information," Spiro wrote in the letter. As reported by Reuters.com

 

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That said, these accusations have been denied by a spokesman on threads saying 

 

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To be clear:

 

“No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”

 

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