Threads: Hype, Dip, And Uncertain Future
When Threads, the new social media app from Meta, emerged on the horizon one fine Wednesday morning i.e. July 5, some of us were taken by surprise. In an already cluttered social media landscape, one wasn’t expecting one more entrant. And that too one that wasn’t particularly differentiated from a platform that had existed for 17 years – Twitter and had an extremely loyal fanbase.
And then, three weeks later, Elon Musk suddenly decided to rebrand Twitter to X, sending social media enthusiasts and Marketers into a tizzy, trying to figure out what lies ahead of Twitter, and some already predicting that the platform’s days are numbered.
Like everybody else, I too opened a Threads account a day after the platform was launched. Yes, FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), the great bane of our times, got me there. I wanted to understand what the big deal about it was. It was the same reason why most brands ended up opening a Threads account as well.
They didn’t necessarily have anything new or different to say on the platform. They didn’t have a different content strategy either (it’s not possible to crack a content strategy for a new platform overnight, anyway!). But they just didn’t want to miss out or be left behind.
And that’s precisely what led to Threads reaching over 100 million users in just five days, becoming the fastest-growing app ever.
Sure, it’s a nice-ish platform which a clean interface. But is there anything exceptional about it? Not that I can think of. It’s a hybrid of Twitter and Instagram and signing up for a Thread account has been made remarkably easy by Zuckerberg for those already on Instagram. But the first lesson of Marketing is that for a product to sustain itself, it must have a strong USP. Threads don’t have one. Other than, of course, the 500-character limit feature, which lets users express themselves more freely than Twitter.
And so, after the initial interest and buzz, the excitement of discovering a new platform, along with the inevitable comparison with Twitter, the platform started losing steam. By the second week, people figured out that deactivating their Threads account didn’t mean that their Instagram account would also be deactivated. And so, Threads' usage dropped by half within a week after its initial hype.
Here are some numbers to make sense of this. Threads’ daily active users (DAU) decreased from 49 million at launch to 23 million by the end of the second week. That’s a drop of over 50 per cent. Users who initially hopped on to the platform did not return regularly, indicating a lack of sustained interest in the platform. The usage time for US users declined by more than half, from around 20 minutes to around 8 minutes by July 10.
For brands looking to build and grow a community, Threads could be yet another platform to connect and engage with their customers. But the big question is: what should be the Threads strategy and should there at all be a separate content strategy for this new app given that brand teams are already struggling to deploy their limited time and resources to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and LinkedIn? Not to forget the podcasts. Too many platforms. Too little time.
In terms of interest, Threads has received more interest from millennials than Gen-Z. And the fact that the platform will remain ad-free till it reaches 1 billion users, has also been a big draw for social media enthusiasts.
So, for brands that are looking to carve out a niche with a unique brand story and voice with authentic, organic content, and don’t want to get lost within a stream of ads vying for the user’s attention, Threads could be a platform to focus on.
One of the interesting features of Threads is the fact that it allows videos that are five minutes long. Brands can leverage this for their long-format storytelling content. Whether it is a new product story or let’s say, a factory/manufacturing site visit, or even an inspiring tete-a-tete with the founder of a brand; these stories could be captured in long-format video content.
India has seen the maximum number of downloads of the app. And so, it’s quite natural that Indian brands, particularly in the fashion and lifestyle space – a category that is always ahead of the curve when it comes to social media adoption and innovation – have happily jumped on the Threads bandwagon. From Myntra to Sugar Cosmetics, and Swiggy to Lee Jeans, brands are doing a mix of product and quirky content on the platform.
Personally, I feel the problem with Threads is that it lacks the zing and the spark of Twitter and the glamour of Instagram while trying to be a bit of both, and ending up being better than neither. That makes this hashtag-free platform a bit too vanilla for most people’s liking. That could well explain why it has already seen a 70% dip in users after the initial spike.
Thanks to the severe content fatigue that has already set in and the overtly cluttered social media landscape, consumers today are expecting newness and stickiness from a social media platform. There must be an extremely compelling reason for them to be there and invest their time and effort. Therefore, an “also ran” app with a confused positioning doesn’t quite cut it.
Of course, three weeks is not good enough time to either diss a platform or exalt it. And so, most brands, users, and creators are playing the wait-and-watch game as far as Threads is concerned, while Zuckerberg and his team are probably already back in the boardroom trying to figure out how to reach the 1 billion mark (pun unintended) at break-neck speed.
Yes, a sharpening of strategy and infusion of freshness is needed to win in this competitive landscape.
And whether it will be the rise-fall-and rise of Threads or the rise and fall of Threads is something only time will tell.
(Piali Dasgupta is the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Columbia Pacific Communities)
