Twitter Verified icon seen on mobile screen with Elon Musk in the background illustration, in … [+] Brussels, Belgium, on December 11, 2022 (Photo illustration by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
NurPhoto via Getty Images
There are a number of stories about how despite an initial Instagram-based surge of Threads sign-ups, user retention has fallen sharply. The Wall Street Journal reports daily active users on Threads are down 70%, with time spent on the app down to 4 minutes, less than 20% of the 21 minutes users were spending on it near launch.
You can blame a bunch of things. An algorithm-based timeline that was initially full of Instagram influencers, celebrities and brands is cited as the main culprit. But as time has gone on, even with the feed becoming less bad, it’s still not chronological, and the app is missing key features like a proper search function and even a working desktop version.
And yet the biggest reason why Threads isn’t working is because Twitter, while constantly stepping on rakes in the Elon Musk era with approximately zero good changes made to the site in his tenure, is still…not dead.
While “Twitter is dying” has been the refrain since Musk took over, Twitter is not actually dead (even if Musk does change its name to “X” soon). Twitter is worse, certainly, but as long as the site is literally still online, it’s hard to imagine Threads surging to become an actual meaningful alternative.
Elon Musk’s bad Twitter decisions are grains of sand on a beach-level numerous. The site breaks a lot, has weird bugs constantly (replies have been showing up as context-less tweets for about a week) and he relentlessly pushes users toward Twitter Blue, the most irritating subscription service in the entire tech landscape.
But Twitter works. On a day to day basis, despite a few days of rate limiting or idiot chess moves like limiting daily DMs, the site still functions. I use it to post my articles, have conversations with my audience, see what’s trending, follow along with live events.
Threads
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None of this is really possible on Threads. Post my articles? If Twitter traffic is bad, Threads traffic does not exist. Conversations with my audience? Sure, but my audience is less than 7% of what it is on Twitter and apparently 70% of them have left. See what’s trending? Impossible on Threads. Live events? No chronological feed. And you can make fun of Elon limiting DMs, but guess what doesn’t have DMs at all? Threads.
There’s also this issue of what exactly anyone is supposed to be posting on Threads. There’s some vague notion of it being a “less toxic” version of Twitter, but Meta cannot really mandate that in any way that will work long term with 100+ million users. There are already jerks in the comments. Spam is close to as bad as Twitter (which even required Threads to rate limit itself, at one point). Actual posting on Threads is mainly either about Threads itself, or the vast majority of people I follow there are simply copy and pasting their tweets there. I am having trouble trying to figure out what I should be posting there instead of something I’d just put on Twitter, and it’s a question I have not been able to answer.
This is not a defense of Musk’s Twitter. If anything my Twitter audience is sick of me railing against Musk’s decision-making almost every day. The rise in hate speech on Twitter is gross and directly encouraged by Musk. His new creator payments are a borderline pyramid scheme. Elevating meaningless, humorless Blue Checks to be the top comments on every tweet is easily the worst fundamental change to the site of them all.
But Twitter still works. Twitter is still online. And until that changes, there’s just no coherent reason to use Threads, which is inferior in every way minus Musk running it.
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