To Thread or not to Thread?
We sat down with our Social Media Manager, Sarah Gevaux to chat all things Threads and Twitter…
A few weeks ago, Threads launched itself into the social media sphere with the kind of energy and uptake we hadn't seen since Pokemon Go in 2016. With over 150 million downloads in two weeks, the app's early start took social media managers by storm in a flurry of sewing related puns and the opportunity to have users finally read captions.
Despite its impressive numbers to date, the future of Threads sits with a question mark over it. Several in fact. Will users take to the text based platform? Will it stay ad and vitriol free? How can brands best fit a space that is proving to be more about community and less about selling? And will it recapture the magic that Twitter once possessed?
Once upon a time — about 12 years ago — Twitter was an exciting and joyful place to hang out. Tweeting your random thoughts, happenings and opinions was acceptable, and welcomed. You met like-minded people online, then hung out with them in real life. Hardcore users formed thoughts in 140 characters or less, live tweeting events as if they were auditioning for a news network. Twitter was the centre of the social media universe.
Above is the Twitter of the good old days that I lovingly remember. The social media community in Melbourne was a tight group of people who would meet up regularly to chat on the way social media was headed — at a local bar in South Melbourne where the owner was the most prolific tweeter there was — in a good way. He brought people together, he solved problems, and he offered free drinks to whomever was the current Mayor of FourSquare. (If you remember FourSquare, it's time for an eye cream).
I met many people from Twitter "in real life" in those days, particularly those from the social and fashion communities. I connected with one girl who, like me, was volunteering at Sydney Fashion Week, then arranged to share a hotel room with her for a week. Another shared an interest with an author, so we met in the book signing queue and are friends to this day. I've been to the weddings of people I met on Twitter, and I asked the aforementioned bar owner to emcee my own nuptials. Twitter thrived on connecting people and building connections beyond the platform.
When we weren't out meeting strangers from the internet (who strangely, never felt like strangers), I particularly loved the desktop application and third party programs for Twitter — Tweetdeck was a standout. A work day at your desk was easily broken up by the conversations playing out in real time on Tweetdeck, a column based platform for your tweets, mentions and the hashtags you followed, updating every minute with the latest conversations happening in real time. It really was extraordinary to have events play out in words, rather than the live video we often see today.
Tweetdeck dashboard
Then — the fail whale — along came ads, spam, negativity and a few ego-fuelled middle-aged white men. Twitter lost its spark, its direction and any semblance of what made it a community-led platform in the first place.
Threads is again offering us the opportunity for a social network where the primary purpose is being social. Conversations are king and the pen is the mightiest sword. Clever use of language instead of a highly curated image feed makes social media managers sigh in relief as a real opportunity to build a brand's personality emerges.
So, where to next? It feels as though Twitter left the door wide open for Threads to come in and make itself comfortable. Individuals praised the "no frills" approach of the network while brands found a place where they could actually be fun and get personal. An open house party that everyone is invited to, Threads is the hostess with the most-est.
Within the first few days of joining, I was threading with the people I tweeted with 12 years ago. It was uncanny how we picked up where we left off, making the same jokes and diving back into the same topics. We might all be a bit older, but we remember how Twitter made us feel when we could jump into a conversation and really have it go somewhere.
Threads is really selling what made Twitter great in the first place: simplicity. I can't wait to see if it captures the attention of the younger generation whose attention spans are more attuned to TikTok than following conversations, and whether it becomes another place for brands to sell, rather than relate. I'd really like to see them introduce a desktop app where we can all play along on our laptops while working the day away, and I cross my fingers that it finds the spark that made so many of us fall in love with Twitter originally.