I have used Threads for one month, here are my thoughts
I've been using Threads, Instagram's Twitter clone, for one month now. Threads launched in the EU in December 2023 and I opened an account pretty much the same day. I have used the Threads app almost every day since it became available, so I wanted to share my personal experience and a couple of thoughts on it, based on my social presence and usage patterns.
You can follow me here, if you want (say hi! 👋).
But first, a little bit of context.
I have a private Instagram account. I don’t post much on it and my connections are primarily friends and relatives. I check it probably a couple of times per day, mostly to see my friends’ stories.
For me, Instagram Stories is the last place where personal interactions happen on the IG app.
The rest of my Instagram feed is made of ads, videos of sailboats, ads, street skateboard tricks (rad!) and more ads.
I check LinkedIn every day, more than once. Over the past three months I have been trying to post consistently at least once a week. Whilst this cadence is not even close to signaling to the LinkedIn algorithm that I am a quote-creator-unquote, it has forced me to form a habit and build a posting muscle that I think has come handy in a few situations.
I get value, without a doubt.
I carefully curate my timeline, I unfollow aggressively and I try to flag the content I am not interested in. However, this causes two things to happen:
- I am bombarded by the same type of posts (mainly B2B ad strategy and Account-based Marketing) by the same group of people, as the algorithm insists on giving me the same content over and over again,
- very few people in my organic network (that is, people I am connected to because I know them and/or have worked with them) post anything that I am really into. Some people dabble in AI, some other people promote the startup they have founded. All of this is really cool. However, the rest of my organic network only share status updates about the trade show they are attending, or the promotion they got.
This is pretty lame: no one wants to read folks who only post humble brags and ex colleagues that are “thrilled to announce” they are getting a new job (?!) or a certification.
Twitter/X is by and large the social network that I have enjoyed the most over the past ten years, but it has obvious issues.
The first and the most obvious one, is the "cold start" problem that Twitter shares with every other social network: it's hard to get started and post something because the platform is already saturated, so the algorithm doesn't give you any distribution if you only have few followers. This means that you are posting to the void and, after a few attempts, you usually stop posting altogether and go back to lurking.
The difference with other social networks here is that on Instagram, for example, you're still kind of posting to your friends, so you know you will be getting some engagement. That's not true on Twitter, since your social graph is usually made of strangers anyway.
The second issue, and the most problematic one for me, is that the timeline is littered with engagement bait, grifters, trolls and reply guys. I don't mind people who want to build an audience so they can sell other people their stuff, but clout chasing and the amplification of outrage for engagement are dominating my timeline, and it is ruining my experience.
Having said that, Twitter is the place where all the most brilliant folks hang out. If you like technology, this is where you learn stuff six months before everyone else. You are exposed to people who want to build nations and those who are building a portfolio of pressure washing businesses. You find folks who geek out on private planes, or global logistics, or menswear. No other platform offer this level of brilliance. The only other social network that can match this experience is Reddit, although we can all agree that Twitter is much better for banter. My two cents, by the way: Twitter isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
So yeah, it triggers anxiety, but Twitter is the most interesting place on the internet. (but yeah, it triggers anxiety)
Threads, or looking for something different
That brings me to Threads and how I am planning to use it.
First off, I'm building a different social graph, following different people and trying really hard to be exposed to other niches, other viewpoints, other topics. Less news-related content, less politics, more personal stories.
Second, I want to be more active, post more, comment more and learn more about the stuff I like to read. Which is somewhere between the strictly marketing-related content I post on LinkedIn and the private stuff I post on Instagram. I am somewhere in the middle, and I kind of want my social graph to reflect that.
So far, the experience has been fairly pleasant. The conversations seem pretty civilized and the content is interesting. The design hides engagement numbers, and that makes posting stuff less intimidating.
A couple of things that are not working right now
The first thing I struggle with is the search experience. Right now it's very hard for me to find interesting people to follow, outside of the names I know already and follow on other platforms. This reduces the stickiness of the app, as it reduces the chances of building a social graph that makes me come back to Threads more often.
The second thing, pretty much related to the one above, is that there is no discovery. Right now there are no trending topics and there is no way I can follow a topic rather than an individual. That sucks because:
- as a consumer of content, I am not able to figure out who I should follow for a specific topic
- as a producer of content, I don't get any distribution. The only way to be discovered by someone outside of my circle is if someone they follow engages with my content. This is the very definition of virality, and in 2024 we all know virality is not an exact science and doesn't work for every type of content.
This is reflected on the "recommended" tab: the algorithm keeps offering me the same three/four authors it knows that I like -> that pushes me to consume more of their content -> that in turn signals the algorithm that I'd like to consume more of their content -> the algorithm continues pushing the same content.
I'm sure this will rapidly improve, but building a social graph from scratch takes a lot of deliberate effort, and I'm not sure enough people would want to spend the same effort as I do building a list of interesting people to follow. Perhaps hashtags are not the answer - at least, I hope so - but the Threads team must figure figure this out pretty soon.
Also, anecdotally: my Instagram network is small by design, so I didn't start with a huge following. This is not a problem per se.
However, none of my followers (zero, zip, zilch, nada) are in fact using Threads. This also means that my social graph is once again going to include folks that are outside of my immediate network. Nothing wrong about it, though it somewhat defeats the purpose of trying to build a social graph that is in the middle between Twitter and Instagram.
I'll report back in a few weeks' time. We'll see how it goes.