Like a lot of people, I’ve been frustrated with Elon Musk’s stewardship of Twitter since buying it. That’s probably its own post, but in summary: the guy has been leaning into selling conflict as the product. Elon’s version of the “town square” seems to be Thunderdome, and he seems to view his role as Shitposter-In-Chief rather than CEO or owner. That, and the degree to which he’s leaned into the idea that someone paying him 8 bucks a month makes their content worthwhile is, frankly, a fucking joke.
So I’ve been watching the rise and fall of the various Twitter clones with some interest, kinda hoping that a viable alternative would emerge. But I’ve also been skeptical that any of the options so far can really deliver the goods. I kicked the tires on both Mastadon and Post, but didn’t last more than about 15 minutes on either one. (And a third one that left such little impression I can’t even remember the name.) Mastadon was just too clunky with its distributed server model — trying to find people was more trouble than it was worth — and there was something about Post’s fixation on long-form posts that was too stuffy and academic. Brevity has its place in the universe. I’ll also admit I’m sort of interested in Bluesky, since their ethos seems to be “let’s just roll back everything Elon did and do that” with some changes on the back-end tech. But Bluesky is still invite-only and I’m not one of the Anointed Few.
So now we have Threads, Mark Zuckerberg’s direct assault on Elon’s fiefdom. Threads launched (at this writing) less than 48 hours ago, and it’s rumored to have already hit 50M users. And that’s the first advantage right there — where other Twitter clones had to build a following from zero, Threads is coming into the game with Meta’s userbase already in place. They just need to sell the idea of a new app to people who are already using the other ones.
Now, I suppose I should digress here. I have a longtime friend who works the financial side of the tech world, and he’s been adamant that this move doesn’t make a lick of sense from a business perspective. In summary, his two main points were a) it’s gonna be almost impossible to peel enough business away from Twitter to turn a profit, and b) the big success stories come from true innovation, not just copying off someone else’s paper.
Now, he’s probably right on both those points. “Defense will stipulate”, as the cop shows say. But that’s not really the lens I’m looking at here. I’m mostly just looking at this as a user of the product. Will people use this product instead of Twitter? And the answer is… a provisional “maybe?”.
The positives are that the vibe is pretty welcoming and carefree at the moment, but then again, some of that is confirmation bias because a lot of the early adopters are also people who want to get the fuck away from Elon Musk. The white supremacists (and ads) haven’t shown up to ruin things yet, so everyone’s in a good mood. The flip side of that coin is that it’s also really superficial. It’s almost like people are avoiding saying anything of substance because they don’t want to be the one to set off any conversational landmines. So it’s almost all “pineapple on pizza?” and people trying to get the intern who runs Dunkin Donuts’ account to reply to them.
It’s also generally chaotic at the moment. Nobody knows what this is supposed to be, so they’re just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. I think that problem is exacerbated for people who weren’t already on Instagram. Since this thing is built on Instagram’s DNA, if you weren’t an IG user, it just fills your feed with whatever was generically popular on IG. Unfortunately, that translates to a dump truck of brand accounts, vapid clout chasers, and thirst traps. And LOTS of Taylor Swift fans.
For the moment, I’m willing to see that as a “me” problem; I need to curate my feed better. But… if it DOESN’T improve, that could be a problem. The one thing Twitter has traditionally done best is real-time current events. I live in Pittsburgh, and when we had that bridge collapse about a year ago, I learned more from Twitter than I learned from any conventional news source. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I’m still a little concerned about Threads’ ability to deliver that. I feel like Russia could drop a nuke on Ukraine and Threads will STILL be stuck on the pineapple-pizza question.
And bragging about follower counts. I’ve already reached my fill on people posting their follower counts, like anyone other than them should give a shit. I guess it’s preferable to crypto scams and white supremacy, but still… give it a rest.
There’s also the whole “how can you support Mark Zuckerberg?” angle. And I get that. I’m not sure it’s a net positive to put MORE power in Meta’s hands. I suppose my answer there is two-fold. First, I’ve been using Facebook for over a decade. If Zuck can pull some new nugget of data from my Threads presence he hasn’t already gotten from Facebook… my hat’s off to him. Second, it’s simply the lesser of two evils for me. Zuck might be an emotionless robot who doesn’t get human interaction, but there’s an element of active malice to Elon Musk’s plans for social media. He WANTS Twitter to be Louder Dumber 8Chan.
So that’s me gathering my first impressions in one place. It’s a place that has some potential, but it still has some kinks to iron out (including a web interface… I do sometimes prefer browsing from the desktop rather than my phone). Perhaps I’ll circle back in a few days or weeks or whatnot, but for now I’ve gotta get back to check whether Slim Jim has acknowledged my Meat Ambassadorship yet. See you in the Threads!
Mental Zoomies 