Facebook deals a final blow to Twitter with Instagram Threads

Meta is known for its ability to capitalize on everything happening in social media, for better and worse. They didn't hesitate to incorporate Stories to stop Snapchat's rise, and they created Reels to try and stop TikTok in its tracks (although the Chinese have been quite resilient and won't back down).

 

It was only a matter of time before they set their sights on Twitter, a historical rival that, thanks to Elon Musk's management, is going through its lowest hours.

These threads, in addition to 500 characters, can include multimedia elements such as photos or videos. Threads users can create their own updates, respond to existing ones, or repost them to reach their followers.

 

The similarity with Twitter is so obvious that it hardly needs further explanation. The move could not be less discreet.

The mechanics, in reality, are exactly the same as those of Elon Musk's network, as we just explained, but it has some important peculiarities.

 

First, it is an Instagram application, independent but linked to our profile on Meta's image and video network. In fact, we will use the same profile, image, and biography. You can even automatically follow the same accounts in Threads that you already follow on Instagram.

 

Once you download the app from iOS or Android and access the platform for the first time, you can start writing and sharing photos and videos (up to 5 minutes length).

Under each thread, you will see four icons: like, comment, repost, and share. When you repost, just like on Twitter, you can also quote the original content and add your own comment.

 

In our feed or timeline, we will see threads from people we follow, as well as from accounts we haven't followed yet, with the goal of enhancing our experience.

Actually, what is surprising is that it hasn't been done before. With the continuous ups and downs of the microblogging platform par excellence, there is a large mass of dissatisfied users looking for an alternative.

 

These Twitter users complain, rightfully, about the poor state of the platform, the outages, the changes such as the paywalled features of Twitter Blue, or the more recent limitations on tweet visibility.

 

With each of these setbacks, they rush to secure their space on certain clones like Mastodon and other platforms, including Instagram itself.

 

Because even though Twitter has fallen out of the top 10 social media platforms, it still maintains more than 550 million active users each month, and that's quite an appealing target for Meta.

While we've been talking about similarities, there are also some differences.

 

The main one is the tone they want to give to the content and interaction. We all know that Twitter is known for having a type of content that can be quite inflammatory, even aggressive. That clashes with Instagram, where the focus is on inspiration, lifestyle, and the somewhat saccharine world of influencers.

 

From what we've seen in the communication released by the Zuckerberg team, they intend to align the user experience more with Instagram than with Twitter.

 

To achieve this, they have been especially scrupulous about security and user control over content. We can block words to avoid certain content from being displayed, choose which users can reply to our messages (everyone, only followers, or none), and, in extreme cases, block and report those who bother us.

Of course, on Twitter, you can also do most of these things, but it is well known that Meta takes its policies and code of conduct much more seriously. In fact, in their official communication, they emphasize this aspect a lot, almost as a warning to future Threads users.

 

Before you rush to install it to see if it suits your eCommerce needs, I must say that, although it is available in 100 countries, it is not yet available in Europe. It is expected to resolve legal matters soon, and Threads will be launched in Spain and the rest of the countries in the Union.