5 Reasons Why Threads Will Beat Twitter
Twitter Has Always Punched Above Its Weight
Let’s face it, Twitter is a brand that has punched above its weight for 15 years. The microblogging platform has become a cultural phenomenon and an indispensable part of the online conversation, giving a voice to the oppressed and marginalised around the world.
However, as a business, Twitter has not grown or innovated at all in the last decade. As a business is has been stagnant, apart from a brief spell of increased attention when Donald Trump used Twitter as his podium when President.
Enter Elon Musk, who thought he could change all that when he acquired Twitter last November for $44 billion. Far from making Twitter better and stronger, he has only succeeded in weakening Twitter’s appeal and competitive position. This has opened the door for rival social media platforms to potentially displace Twitter in its vulnerable state.
Several would-be ‘Twitter killers’ have emerged over the years, from Google+ to Mastodon, but none have managed to live up to their promise. However, the latest contender, Threads by Meta, could finally be the one to topple Twitter. IMHO, it will be the platform that replaces Twitter as the public square.
With the might of Instagram’s 1.5 billion users and Meta’s financial muscle behind it, Threads has a running start on Twitter. Early reports said Threads had already signed up 100 million users in its first week alone, with more optimistic projections saying 400 million. If these figures are accurate, Threads may have leapfrogged Twitter in user numbers already.
To add a colourful backstory to the Twitter v Threads saga, there’s clearly no love lost between Elon Musk and Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, with Musk challenging Zuck to a “cage fight” on Twitter. More recently, Musk has threatened to sue Meta for allegedly stealing Twitter’s intellectual property after poaching employees laid off by Musk. But legal bluster aside, and against a backdrop of declining advertising revenues at Twitter, Musk should be worried about Threads’ rapid rise.
Here are five reasons why, IMHO, Threads will beat Twitter over the long run:
Reason 1: Threads has a stronger business model
Threads can leverage the full power of Meta’s social media empire in a way Twitter simply cannot match.
Threads benefits enormously from being part of the Facebook/Instagram ecosystem. The integration with Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook gives Threads unrivalled cross-promotion opportunities and the ability to bundle services and share data across platforms. This provides Threads with structural advantages in areas like ad targeting that Twitter lacks as a standalone company.
It also gives Threads a massive jumpstart in user numbers. To put that into context, if you ignore China for a minute because neither Meta nor Twitter are there, the global population is 6.5 billion. Then you take out the roughly 1.5 billion people with no internet access at all and you have an addressable market of roughly 5 billion people.
Of this, Meta has roughly 2.8 billion monthly active users, Twitter has about 200 million. That means 1 in every 25 people use Twitter whereas over half the planet is on a Meta platform. Add to that the average time spent on Facebook is 17 minutes compared to less than 4 on Twitter and you can see that Meta has a much stronger hold on attention.
Reason 2: Meta has superior financial strength
As part of the Meta empire, Threads will have essentially unlimited resources to throw at this fight. Whilst Elon Musk is spending $1.5 billion of his $2.5 billion annual revenues paying off debt interest on his loans to buy Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg is sitting on a cash pile $15 billion that he doesn’t need to touch. That’s because Meta is a cash machine.
Make no mistake about it, for all of Facebook and Instagram’s fault and flaws, it’s an awesome cash generating business. Last year, Meta’s revenue was $116 billion, roughly the same as the year before. Of that, Meta reported a net income of $23 billion, and that was after spending $12 billion on its investment in virtual reality headsets and the metaverse.
Meta may not be known for innovation, but Zuckberg has shown repeatedly that he is operationally excellent at scaling platforms quickly. Meta has proven adept at acquiring and copying competitors.
From buying Instagram to copying Snapchat and TikTok’s key features and making them their own, the Zuck has shown that he knows a good thing when he sees it and is morally comfortable with making it his own.
This combination of substantially deeper pockets than Twitter with an operational excellence that is only matched by Alphabet/Google in the digital ad space, Meta can easily outspend and outlast Twitter in any head-to-head battle.
Reason 3: Advertisers strongly prefer Meta
According to Meta’s own numbers, digital advertising on Facebook and Instagram drove a 52% higher return when compared with all other channels. This is because Facebook and Instagram have developed awesome advertising models, that allow advertisers to personalise ad targeting and get huge returns on their digital ad spend.
Advertisers have consistently flocked to Meta’s platforms, valuing the ability to buy bundled ad packages across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta’s self-service ad platform offers superior targeting capabilities and optimisation versus Twitter’s less robust tools. The potential to advertise across Threads and other Meta apps through cross-promotion makes the platform even more enticing.
Whilst Meta hasn’t opened Threads to ads yet, it might not be able to resist for long. Advertisers are eager to spend serious money there and are already planning for the eventuality, with a good number expecting the opportunity to arrive later this year.
The Twitter clone has everything ad buyers look for in a partner: a large audience, public interest, and potential access to Meta’s industry-leading advertising tools. And as soon as Mark Zuckerberg welcomes them, they won’t waste a minute.
Meta’s magic is that their digital advertising platform centralises buying across all of its properties into a single platform. This means buyers can coordinate their digital ad spend across the whole of the Meta ecosystem, treating Facebook and Instagram as a single distribution channel with different audiences rather than separately. It’s an impregnable feature that protects Meta’s business model.
It’s extremely effective at using advanced targeting and optimisation and once Meta adds a check box to extend ads to Threads, you can be sure that digital ad buyers will check it.
The big question is when will Meta turn on adverting in Threads. Mark Zuckerberg said last week that he’ll wait until Threads is on track to 1 billion users before thinking about monetisation, but my quess is that it will be sooner than that. Not because Meta need to rush, but because I think, and it is just an opinion, the calls from advertisers to try out Threads will be huge.
And when Zuckerberg turns on ads, this will be the final nail in the coffin for Twitter.
Image this: Zuckerberg says to advertisers, “switch your Twitter budget to Threads and I’ll make sure it’s better targeted and get you a 50%, 100%, 200% gain over Twitter.” It’ll be irresistible.
Reason 4: Musk’s changes alienate fans of old-Twitter
When Musk walked into Twitter HQ carrying a kitchen sink last November, he carried the promise of a renewed, rejuvenated and reinvented Twitter. He was going to make it the public square for the world, where everyone could have their say without fear of being cancelled by the so-called woke police. But it went wrong pretty quickly.
In less than a year, Musk has made some significant changes at Twitter that have not turned out to be killer features. His biggest mistake, IMHO, is with verified accounts. A blue checkmark meant something in old-Twitter. It was a mechanism for defining credibility and trust in the account. But now, in Musk’s pursuit of alternative revenue streams, a blue checkmark has no value at all. Anyone can buy one.
Nowadays, the user experience on Twitter includes more ads, more content from people you don’t follow and a restriction on how many tweets you can see in a day. Far from making Twitter better, Musk is slowly removing the things that made old-Twitter “Twitter” and creating a new-Twitter that is less desirable.
In his quest to rapidly innovate/disrupt through chaos, Elon Musk risks driving away longtime Twitter users. He has already removed features that fans have used for years and is focused on adding options like payments and long-form video that may fundamentally alter the platform experience.
While Musk wants to reimagine Twitter, these changes could easily end up alienating users who simply want the old Twitter they know and love. Meanwhile, Meta will likely replicate the most appealing aspects of the old-Twitter on Threads, appealing to disgruntled users.
Reason 5: Content moderation matters more than free speech
By positioning Twitter as a haven for “free speech”, Musk risks not only driving away advertisers but also users looking for a safer space online. Research suggests most people care more about content moderation than absolute free speech. And contrary to Musk’s POV, research suggests that content moderation has real value in encouraging free speech, rather than suppressing it.
That’s because, in the absence of content moderation levelling the playing field for everyone, “free speech” by adversarial groups can quickly kill off the speech and opinions of opposing voices. In other words, the loud mouths and bullies will always be heard more in an unmoderated environment.
When it comes to it, Meta has far more experience policing content at scale. Meta spent approximately $5 billion globally on safety and security, which is essentially content moderation, last year, and has more than 40,000 people working on it. Whereas Musk fires the Twitter content moderation and online safety teams and only has roughly 1,800 employs for the whole of Twitter!
In other other words, this will make Threads more palatable than Twitter to average users. Musk’s costly focus on free speech at the expense of moderation gives Threads a potential edge.
Here’s The Thing:
The launch of Threads has been a masterclass by Zuckerberg.
Its integration with Meta’s family of apps provides inherent structural advantages that will be difficult for Twitter to overcome. Meta’s financial resources and operational excellence are formidable. Twitter is totally dependant on advertising revenue, which has already halved since Musk took over.
Musk’s unpopular changes combined with Meta’s huge appeal to ad buyers points only one way to how this is going to play out. Having said that, it is unlikely that this will be a winner-take-all battle. Both platforms can co-exist to some degree. But the odds seem stacked in Threads’ favour to take market share from Twitter over time.
The Twitter house is betting heavily on Elon Musk’s ability to radically reinvent the platform. But Meta’s experience in skill fully replicating competitors could make Threads a “close enough” substitute for the old-Twitter that many users cherish and want to see come back.
Unless Musk can pull off his vision with his very limited resources, Twitter may end up a much smaller niche platform while the less revolutionary but better-resourced Threads becomes the mainstream choice. The battle is far from over, but the key factors to watch will be user growth trends, content creator preferences, advertiser demand patterns, and most of all, who can execute better on their very different strategic visions.
With Meta’s operational excellence and vast resources, the smart money likely favours Threads to ultimately win this war.
About The Author
Rick Huckstep is a write, podcaster and YouTuber with a passion for emerging technologies and the way they will shape tomorrow’s digital world.
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This article was written and created with the use of AI tools including NotionAI and Canva.
Originally published at https://rickhuckstep.com on July 19, 2023.
