If you can’t beat them, emulate them.
usually like this mark ZuckerbergIt’s his go-to strategy when dealing with upstart rivals to his social media empire.
those days are gone Instagram Like the original vision, it’s just a photo feed, with two of its main features now pulled straight from Snapchat (Stories) and TikTok (Reels).
Other cases culled from the wider web didn’t go so well—you might not even have heard of Bulletin, a subscription newsletter service similar to Substack; or Sparked, an online dating service; Comparable sources of inspiration were closed before.
But with Threads, another new application Yuanthis time apparently in Twitterthere’s reason to believe Zuckerberg is confident in his chances of becoming popular — and largely.
Launched Thursday after months of rumorswhich is advertised as a text-focused platform where “communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to tomorrow’s trends”.
It sounded—and certainly looked—very familiar, almost shamelessly familiar.
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Threads app preview on the Apple App Store
But Zuckerberg never seemed ashamed of adopting other companies’ ideas, and viewed Twitter as a wounded animal — one he believed he could not only not replicate, but beat.
“I’ve always thought Twitter should have a billion people using it,” he told podcaster Lex Fridman earlier this year.
“The idea, coupled with good execution, should make it happen.”
The gun goes off — but a pivotal decision could give him the perfect chance to hit the mark.
Threads will allow users to keep the same username and follow the same accounts as they do on Instagram, making it easier to get started for the photo-sharing app’s 2 billion users.
Even if only a small percentage of people took action, Threads would immediately dwarf other Twitter likes such as blue sky and mastodonwhile Twitter’s estimated user base may grow rapidly by 360-400m.
Apparently, people are interested in alternatives to Twitter because Elon MuskThe seditious ownership of, and his recent controversial move Apply a temporary reading limit to all accounts Rekindled the desire for many to leave.
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Elon Musk’s Twitter tenure has been messy to say the least
Of course, the most important factor with any social media platform is who you connect with – your Bluesky or Mastodon feed can feel a little lonely if your Twitter followers don’t all choose the same new home.
Chances are, your favorite people on Twitter have more people on Instagram than anywhere else. Apart from the sheer number of users that Instagram has, its biggest characteristic is who those users are.
Threads could really leverage Instagram’s breadth of celebrities, athletes, politicians, sports clubs, news outlets and brands, giving it an immediate edge over other Twitter-like apps.
There’s no doubt that Meta’s new platform was built with a mainstream audience in mind.
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Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t successfully launched a new platform in a while
Zuckerberg hasn’t enjoyed any positive buzz in a while Facebook’s User Privacy Scandal and Criticism of his virtual universe strategy, while a generation of young people grew up preferring TikTok because they love social media.The growth of Facebook, the platform that made him famous, has long stagnated, while Meta’s other two most successful platforms – Instagram and WhatsApp – just simply bought it.
But if Threads succeeds, Zuckerberg will see it as proof that one of Silicon Valley’s earliest tech brethren still has it.
if there is not, He just needs to beat Musk in the ring.