I have a history of giving Mark Zuckerberg unsolicited commentary and advice, so why not on his latest product? So, here we go, with an analysis of this Twitter clone that’s not really a Twitter clone (wink wink!)
First, we acknowledge that this is not quite the finished product. The people over at Meta needed to launch this on the date they promised.
That said, there are some potentially fatal flaws which we hope are merely temporary. That we hope are not in the long-term iterations of the product.
The first: I have noticed that my timeline (thread? scroll? whatchamacallit) is full of accounts I do not follow. One of the joys of original Twitter is that I would only see content from accounts I deliberately followed. Content that I curated (a word I really detest, with its twee implications) myself. This was for both their original content and their retweets. This algorithmic foisting of strange accounts is simply not on. I do not want content from accounts I do not know or care for.
Speaking of algorithmic, please, please have the threads be chronological. Or at the very least, give me the choice. Do not dredge up content from days ago that you think would interest me, or fill up my timeline with haphazard content that your algorithm thinks is best for me. Trust me, my mind is far more competent than any algorithm. I know what I want.
The next one is perhaps the biggest flaw of all. The tightness of Threads’ integration with Instagram is a massive error. Many of us (especially me) use each social media platform in different ways, to the extent of having different personalities for each. Wallace Kantai on Facebook, @wgkantai on Twitter, and @wgkantai on Instagram are all very different ‘people’, with different audiences, different content and different approaches. Users should be able to choose different usernames between the two platforms. Heck, there shouldn’t be a requirement to have an Instagram account to be on Threads. Corporate accounts, especially, may struggle to be cross-platform, especially when their content is not visual (hence their lack of presence on Instagram). In short, make Threads a standalone app. You can integrate it in the back end (such as for verification), but that’s it.
These next ones may be temporary, but they’re a bother all the same:
Threads seems to be mobile-first. Matter of fact, mobile only (another flaw inherited from Instagram). This means that I cannot use it on a desktop/ laptop computer or tablet. Meaning I have to patiently type on a phone keyboard, which is a real bother.
Others: there’s no way (yet) of writing entire ka-uzis and posting everything at once. You have to post one part after another. For those of us who write entire essays before we post, we feel constrained. We cannot review the whole ka-uzi, or edit it. Once we post, we have posted.
Do we need DMs? Yes, especially for corporate accounts. We can’t be anikaing everything out there for all to see. But stop sending nyoods.
500 characters is excellent. Not so few that you are forced to write in Morse code, but not so many that you find long essays on a platform that is not designed for it. Don’t change it.
Also, the common community standards across from Instagram is excellent. You do not want to log in and some inappropriate, NSFW content shows up on your timeline.
What about privacy concerns and all the rest? Legitimate, but I’m not sure too many people care enough to not use it on that basis only. There’s a certain fatalism about how much we’re surveilled now that that would not be a deal breaker. But, of course, that depends on whether some mega scandal breaks out in the future that causes all of us to question this.
All in all, this really is not a bad effort. Elon Musk continues to destroy Twitter with his descent into incoherence, and there is still a need for a good microblogging platform. The heft of Meta means that Threads begins with several built-in advantages, especially name recognition, network effects and usability, which platforms like Mastodon and the rest don’t have.
But as with everything new, it will start with a bang (lots of signups between now and the weekend, which you’ll hear endlessly about ‘Threads is the fastest growing social network in history’ and such), then go into a slump as the new car smell wears off, and then settle into its own by the end of our cold season (or the summer huko majuu).
You’ll also see users defining for themselves what Threads actually *is*. Is it a pure Twitter clone? Is it halfway between Twitter and Instagram? Will there be further integration with other Meta platforms such as WhatsApp?
Give it time. We’ll see.
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