Threads: Is It Worth It Yet?
By now, we all know that drastic changes on X created a primordial rift in the social media continuum. New apps emerged but reminded many of the halcyon days of social media, when posting was lighthearted and fun. Threads and Bluesky have both been described as reiterations of Twitter’s early days, while Mastodon reminds some of the bulletin board systems of the ‘80s. Ian Bogost and Charlie Warzel from the Atlantic called Threads “Zombie Twitter,” and went on to say, “Social media cannot become good again, because we will not let it evolve. It can merely live and die over and over, like a zombie.”
This grim view of the current state of social media is held by many, as market fragmentation created significant challenges for brands using text-based (also referred to as conversational) marketing apps. As of April 2024, Threads is the only recently-emerged text-based app that poses significant future risk to X. According to Business Insider,
“So far in April, Threads has averaged an estimated 28 million daily active users, so people who have opened the app at least once in a 24-hour period […] X has averaged 22 million DAUs, a usage rate that’s 21% lower than Threads.”
While this spike was only among U.S. users, it’s important to note that as of April, Threads had only existed for nine months, compared to X’s (formerly Twitter’s) 18 years.
All of the above point to Threads’ future success as an app, but is it worth it to digital marketers yet? The answer is… Maybe.
Mark Zuckerberg envisions Threads as a more positive “public conversations” app and hopes to someday see 1 billion users, a goal X has yet to accomplish, he noted. An ad exec at Meta spoke anonymously to Digiday, stating, “Since our priority is to build consumer value first and foremost, there are no ads or monetization features currently on Threads. At this time, we encourage businesses to experiment with Threads as part of their organic social strategy where it makes sense.” The same article states that “The tech platform recently told ad execs that they will be able to buy ads on its X-rival, text-based platform as early as the second half of this year,” but this has not been confirmed outside of Digiday’s reporting.
Presuming the report is correct, it makes sense for U.S. ad execs to plan what an advertising campaign on Threads might look like. One major brand advantage on Threads is that “Instagram handles that haven’t yet created a Threads account are marked as ‘pending’ and will be automatically followed once they join Threads. With the ‘follow all’ button so accessible during sign-up, brands have an audience of followers from Instagram already waiting on Threads.” Since Threads is a public conversations app, brands need to be wary not to oversell and thus alienate community users. Additionally, threading (see what we did there?) the needle between organic and paid strategy will be crucial in the early stages of advertising and may draw community backlash until ads are more commonplace.
In essence, once advertising launches on Threads, brands that haven’t already built an organic presence before they begin advertising will likely be seen as predatory rather than part of the community. To that end, any brand considering a future on Threads must establish a clear organic strategy before contemplating an advertising campaign…