Instagram Threads, a new social media spinoff platform from Meta, is set to release on Thursday July 6th according to the Wall Street Journal. Users can pre-download the application on mobile app stores.
Meta’s decision to launch the service was in part due to Twitter’s difficulties and major changes since Elon Musk took over the platform in the Fall of 2022. Only recently, Twitter suffered another outage, and Musk decided to curtail the total number of tweets users could see, including paying ones.
The company is still ramping up monetization of Reels, but Stories now accounts for more than a quarter of Instagram’s worldwide ad revenue, according to Insider Intelligence.
Any Twitter-like product by Meta is likely to face an uphill battle. Although Meta will draw on Instagram data to launch its new app, the company will still need to get users to migrate to the app.
Meta holds several key advantages over Twitter in the “microblogging” competition. It can leverage its wide user base already present on Instagram and Facebook, as high as 2 billion users. It has deep relationships with advertisers, who have been reticent to return to Twitter. Finally, it aggressively scrapes for data and information of its users. Twitter, however, already has an established committed user base who will not easily be swayed to another platform.
The data that 'may' be collected by Meta's new Twitter competitor, Threads. pic.twitter.com/jQElDDGeNd
— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) July 4, 2023
Despite Twitter’s loosening restrictions in the hopes of bringing back users such as President Trump, it faces competition from other services as well. Several alternatives have popped up focusing on specific user experience, such as Mastodon, Bluesky, and Trump’s own Truth Social.
Social media apps have a long history of “copying” popular features from competitors and adopting them. Snapchat was responsible for the first disappearing post, which Instagram renamed “Stories.” TikTok revamped the video medium, which Youtube, Twitter and Facebook soon adapted to their platforms. Google attempted to copy Facebook’s profile-centric display with its Google+ but that ended in failure.
