Getty Image / Rafael Henrique / SOPA Images / LightRocket
Twitter saw a mass exodus of users when they began throttling user’s ability to view tweets. The introduction of rate limits, tiered to Twitter Blue and non-paying users, was met with enormous blowback that sent a flood of users to Jack Dorsey’s Bluesky.
Days later, Facebook co-founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg swooped in with Threads. At the time, it seemed like a nail in the coffin on Twitter as Threads set records for the fastest growth ever seen in Silicon Valley, only taking 5 days to reach 100 million users.
Meta was able to rely on growth hacking to reach the 100 million mark. By rolling out a ‘follow your Instagram contacts’ feature, anyone with a large Instagram page saw quick growth on Threads.
This also meant that a generation of Instagram influencers who never spent time on Twitter now instantly had a second social network for distribution and various forms of monetization. It seemed to be a win-win for both sides while Twitter appeared to be on life support.
Things took another turn on Monday when Head of Instagram/Threads Adam Mosseri, announced Threads would introduce rate limits akin to Twitter. He wrote:
“Spam attacks have picked up so we’re going to have to get tighter on things like rate limits, which is going to mean more unintentionally limiting active people (false positives). If you get caught up those protections let us know.”
Anecdotally, I can certainly say I’ve seen an uptick in spam/bot activity on Threads but that was always going to happen due to the massive spam/bot issue on Instagram. Just as relying on Instagram followers/mutuals for growth hacking helped Threads break world records, it also sent Threads running full speed into a spam issue that needs to be tackled.
Zuckerberg’s Update On Future of Threads App
Three hours after Adam Mosseri made that announcement, Mark Zuckerberg made an announcement of his own about future of Meta’s Threads. Zuck wrote:
“I’m very optimistic about how the Threads community is coming together. Early growth was off the charts, but more importantly 10s of millions of people now come back daily. That’s way ahead of what we expected. The focus for the rest of the year is improving the basics and retention. It’ll take time to stabilize, but once we nail that then we’ll focus on growing the community. We’ve run this playbook many times (FB, IG, Stories, Reels, etc) and I’m confident Threads is on a good path too.”
Elon Musk Responds
Not to sit by idly and miss a chance to needle his rivals, Twitter owner/CEO Elon Musk chimed in. In response to a screenshot of Adam Mosseri’s Thread, Elon Musk replied “Lmaooo Copy 🐈.”
While this should be a massive PR win for Elon Musk, the Twitter CEO has recently been spending extra time clarifying the new Creator Program that’s sending huge bonuses to Creators. While it was initially thought the bonuses were based on total views, Elon specified that only people who are already paying for Twitter Blue count as views…
This morning, he wrote “What actually matters is ads served to other verified accounts (so we know they’re not bots). We’re working on bugs that caused very few ads to be served on some accounts and also revenue sharing ads served on profile views. This could 10X or more payouts to some users.”
When Elon Musk first began pushing Twitter Blue as ‘verification’ he sold it as a way to serve less ads on the site. Instead, now users who are paying him are forced to see those ads so he can then pay a hand-picked group of creators in return.
With all of this in mind, Twitter still appears to be winning.
Users on Threads are growing impatient waiting for a chronological/following timeline. There is no usable desktop interface or Tweetdeck like feature. DMs don’t exist. The inability to see ‘Quote Threads’ or even the number of Quote Threads has bothered many.
Threads’ team has said they are working quickly to address all of this and roll out new features as quickly as possible but based on Google Trends, interest in Threads evaporated overnight.
Threads needs to act fast if they want any portion of that 100 million user base to stick around. Of course, Threads/Meta an also quickly roll out Creator Bonus programs just like they have for Reels on Facebook.