“Threads”, or communication threads, or a series of topics, or whatever this name means, would not have witnessed this “crazy” demand, so to speak, and this great interest, if it had not been for the parent company “Meta”, the owner of “Facebook” and “Instagram”. WhatsApp is behind the new application, even if the latter has not announced its intention to compete with the ancient Twitter platform, in form and content.

More correctly, it is not a competition between two platforms as much as it is a duel between two billionaires, each of whom seeks to achieve purely commercial profits, even if the method differs between strictness, flexibility, and even rudeness between the two parties.

Musk and Zuckerberg in the wrestling ring

It may be that what preceded the announcement of the establishment of the new competing platform was what made “Threads” more exciting and widespread, when Musk (52 years old), owner of “Twitter”, invited his rival, Mark Zuckerberg (39 years old), owner of “Meta”, last month, to a closed wrestling ring.

Threads and Twitter are the mother of all battles in the billions

For a real physical duel, the two are going through physical fitness training and preparing seriously for it, and it will be an unprecedented historical event between two billionaires, which the President of the World Mixed Martial Arts Organization (UFC), Dana White, is working enthusiastically to organize, in an equal match on the technological level, wealth, and especially on the ego level. Between the two men.

 

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg 

The greatest evidence that the promised wrestling match served the launch of Threads is that hardly any news or article about the new application is without two pictures of Musk and Zuckerberg wearing boxing gloves facing each other inside a wrestling ring.

Musk’s announcement last April

However, does anyone remember Musk’s announcement last April that the “Twitter” brand no longer existed after it was merged into “XCorp”, which he owned, which was considered at the time as an execution of “Blue Bird”, in preparation for transforming it into a new application bearing the name “Everything”, which means “everything”, and aspires to be the most powerful financial technology company, “FinTech”, in the world from a base of more than 250 million users?

Where is he today regarding this announcement? Why is the application still fighting existential battles and is faced with challenges from all sides? Threads and Twitter are the mother of all battles in the billions

 

Threads, five days old

On its fifth day, “Threads” became famous and well-known, and everyone defined it mostly by the number of those who downloaded the application on their phones.

As it gained “30 million new users within the first 24 hours of its launch,” after exceeding five million users in the first four hours of its launch, surpassing The record was set by “GBT Chat”, which took only 5 days to collect one million users! Note that the comparison is not equal between a cloned application based on Instagram, which has a billion followers and 350 million users, and a revolutionary artificial intelligence product.

Threads and Twitter are the mother of all battles in the billions

But it seems that what is important to the public, and unfortunately to the media, is that “Threads” immediately attracted big names of activists and celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, Hugh Jackman, Mike Pence, former US Vice President, and Jeff Bezos, in addition to media outlets such as the Washington Post and Reuters.

The Economist, and platforms like The Hollywood Reporter, Vice, and Netflix.

The credit, of course, goes to the fact that Threads benefits from the Instagram user base, which exceeds one billion and 350 million users.

The new application was not born out of nothing, as it is considered a textual extension of its pictorial twin, “Instagram,” as it starts from solid foundations that include, for all its users, its features and services, in addition to the ability to publish texts alongside photos and short films.

Threads can only be accessed via Instagram

The two applications are so closely linked that Threads can only be accessed via Instagram. But what is worse or disturbing is that it is also not possible to delete “Threads” without deleting the “Instagram” account at the same time. Will this hinder the spread of the application at a later time?

Note that Zuckerberg had previously launched the “Threads” service in 2019 as part of “Instagram” with the aim of competing with “Snapchat” at the time, but it met with a miserable failure that led him to stop it and dispense with it after two years, not to mention the failure of his bets on cryptocurrencies and “Metaverse” in the last two years. .

A shameless invasion of privacy

Three main features distinguish Threads from Twitter. The first is the number of text characters, which may reach 500 across Threads, while it is still limited to 280 characters on Twitter.

The early professional supporters of the Bluebird have always praised the very small number of characters that the Twitter application allowed years ago, compared to other means of communication at the time, and how challenging it was to shorten speech to what was useful, purposeful, and profound, in accordance with the saying, “The best speech is what is short and meaningful.” .

The second feature

is the ability to publish short films of up to five minutes in length, unlike Twitter, where the duration of a short film is limited to two or more minutes.

This may constitute a greater factor of attraction for social media users seeking windows to promote their businesses and products, noting that the abundance of applications that provide this service, led by “Tik Tok”.

The leader in its field, leads to the competition being inverse, so that users receive the largest number of Data in the shortest time without feeling bored or losing enthusiasm for following the publisher.

As for the third feature

which is worth paying attention to, it is the shameless persistence of “Meta” through its new application in violating the privacy of users, and its work in collecting the largest number of personal data (in about 25 categories) that is considered sensitive, and has reached the point of asking about health, fitness, and financial information. , contact information, search and purchase history, and even the user’s physical address among other things.

Ultimately, these applications live off hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenue, and do not hesitate to exploit their users’ data to fill their companies’ accounts and make huge profits at the expense of their privacy.

 

The Threads logo on the background of the logo threads as promoted since July 4, 2030 

Ad-free

Although Threadz is still ad-free in its early stages, the more you penetrate your customer’s life, the greater the return. Will Meta, for example, one day require the entry of racial or ethnic data, information about social tendencies, family situations, disability, religious or philosophical beliefs, political positions, genetic information, or biometric data?

This feature may hinder the new application, which has been launched in 100 countries so far, including the United Kingdom, from entering the European Union, where the strict regulations and strict rules imposed by the new Digital Markets Law on major Internet companies in terms of using sensitive data for advertisements without being subject to approval. , according to what was stated by the Data Protection Commission in Ireland.

This is what you do not find through the “Twitter” application, which collects information from users during their use of the platform and when they authorize it, or when “Twitter” receives data from third parties, according to the application’s privacy policy.

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ActivityPub

On the other hand, “Threads”, by relying on the “ActivityPub” protocol, takes into account the desire of users to leave the platform one day without losing followers, as they can be transferred to any alternative platform that these users choose, as a kind of flexibility and openness that “Meta” shows.

In contrast to the restrictions that the Twitter application continues to impose on subscribers. The last of these restrictions is Musk’s imposition of “temporary restrictions,” as he described it, on the number of posts that platform users can view in one day, limiting them to 10,000 posts for accounts verified with a blue mark, which pay fees, as well as unverified accounts at 1,000 posts.

Amid tweeters’ complaints, under the pretext of processing data withdrawal from third parties, especially those that rely on artificial intelligence, and manipulating the platform system.

The day standards were lost!

Meta has many precedents in violating the requirements of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and blatantly violating user data from the European Union by transferring it to the United States, which resulted in it being fined about $1.3 billion last May. .

Although this incident was related to Facebook, in principle, the same requirements could be applied to other meta services, including Threads, which is a higher level of data exploitation.

“Meta” was also subject to a fine last January of more than $410 million from the European Union as well, for the same reasons, with “Instagram” entering the line.

This is in addition to the “Cambridge Analytica” scandal, which revealed that “Meta” allowed the British political consulting company to access the personal data of “Facebook” users in the period before the latter became “Meta.”

Will users ignore all of these things in order to unleash their posts on a free platform that guarantees them the freedom of expression that they lacked on Twitter?

Twitter weakness is a lever for Threads

It is clear that Threads does not offer anything new except that it has opened the door to receiving “refugee” users from Twitter, fleeing the sharp, and sometimes illogical, changes that have occurred in the application’s policies since Musk took over, which are still causing controversy.

In “Threads”, Zuckerberg does not rely only on the strength of “Instagram” and its sisters, as much as he relies on “Twitter’s” administrative weakness, which translated into a decline in “Twitter’s” advertising revenues in the United States by 59 percent compared to last year.

Which recorded about five billion dollars, according to ” The New York Times, which relies for 90 percent of its revenue on advertising. The so-called “Twitter killer”’s meteoric rise coincides with the struggle that Twitter, and Musk in particular, is waging to achieve revenues.

Twitter suffered a painful blow in this area when the ten largest advertisers on the platform reduced their spending by 89 percent, from $71 million to $7.6 million during the months of September and October of last year, following Musk’s acquisition of the platform. According to estimates by Sensor Tower Research.

 

Yaccarino is Twitter’s last hope.

In an effort to save what was left of the application, Musk resigned from his position as CEO of Twitter, reserving for himself a prominent role in the company as Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Technology Officer, to replace him with Linda Yaccarino, a pioneer in the field of advertising.

Who was known through her previous position as CEO. At NBCUniversal, it is betting on its efforts to “improve relationships with brands”, including “General Motors” and “United Airlines”, and other celebrities, political figures and other influential parties, who intended to abandon ” Twitter” as participants or advertisers to other alternative platforms, most notably “BlueSky,” “Mastodon,” and “Post.”

Musk’s actions

They were dissatisfied with Musk’s actions, including allowing the return of extremist accounts, his banning of many journalists, the expulsion of content managers responsible for dealing with hate speech, some of Musk’s racist behavior and controversial tweets, in addition to the discontent of his employees, content creators, and Twitter enthusiasts.

Even former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had previously criticized Musk’s leadership of Twitter, saying last April that “everything went south,” referring to the negative change in the face of the platform and the losses it suffered on the practical level.

And financial. As for Dorsey himself, he launched an application some time ago that is considered an alternative to Twitter, and today a competitor to Threads, under the name “Bluesky Social,” and it is still undergoing testing, without a clear timetable for the site to become public.

Lou Pascalis, founder of advertising consulting firm AGL and former chief marketing officer at Bank of America, believes that Yaccarino is Musk’s “last best hope” to save advertising revenues and the company’s value, and that Yaccarino’s credibility alone may not be enough to sort out the chaos. Which Musk created and is updating on Twitter.

“Meta” and the culture of reproduction and failure

Meta’s history is stained by the reproduction of successful experiments, applications, and businesses, but it has been unable to reproduce these successes except in rare cases. Among these successes is “Instagram Stories,” which mimics the features of “SnapStories,” and it is in the midst of replicating the success of “Tik Tok,” which still needs a lot of momentum.

Threads and Twitter are the mother of all battles in the billions

Facebook also failed in its attempt to clone the “Substack” newsletter service from During “Bulletin” in 2021. This is in addition to the applications that “Meta” launched in previous stages, all of which faltered and were closed, such as “Slingchat,” “Paper,” “Rooms,” and “AGTV.” According to Mike Proulx, Forrester’s research director.

These experiences may justify initial analyzes that suggested that despite the challenges faced by Twitter, the cloned Threads is expected to face major obstacles in its attempt to overcome the legacy application, and that the battle will be arduous to gain market share.

Zuckerberg acknowledges that the war will be long, and when asked whether Threads will overtake Twitter, he said, “It will take some time, but I think there should be a chat application that brings together more than a billion people.”

This is an ambitious vision that Zuckerberg sees. Twitter missed the opportunity to achieve it.

Will the expectations be true and Threads will sit on the throne of text platforms, or will the credit of Twitter and its loyal and distinguished supporters keep it at the forefront?

Perhaps Yaccarino’s tweet, commenting on Zuckerberg’s move, indicates the future of the battles between Threads and Twitter, as she tweeted: “We are often imitated, but the Twitter community can never be replicated.”

We have learned from experience that content wins in the end.