“Threads”, ” son “ in French: the Meta group launched a new social network on Thursday, July 6, directly connected to Instagram. In direct competition with Twitter, it could take advantage of the difficulties of the social network acquired by Elon Musk at the end of 2022. Available in the United States and the United Kingdom, the new service is not yet accessible to European users – possibly for reasons related to European law on the protection of personal data.
This social network largely uses the codes that have made Twitter so successful: a news feed of short text messages to which it is possible to respond individually and a system of subscriptions and “likes”. Integrated into a dedicated application, Threads is however largely connected to Instagram – it is possible to link your Threads account to your Instagram account to keep your username and import your subscription lists.
Copy Strategy
With Threads, Meta continues its deliberate strategy of imitating its competitors. Before this platform inspired by Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg’s group has, since mid-2020, integrated on Instagram and then on Facebook, the short video, the king format of TikTok. Called Reels, this format is now viewed 140 billion times a day, doubling in one year, welcomes Meta.
The group has also converted to another trait of TikTok: content. ” recommended “. It could, according to Mr. Zuckerberg, eventually represent “30% to 40%” users’ feeds on Facebook and Instagram, originally made up exclusively of photos, texts and videos published by the accounts to which they had subscribed. The founder had already applied – rather successfully – the same strategy of response against Snapchat, of which he had in 2018 copied the “story” format (slightly longer videos, of a few tens of seconds), now installed on Instagram and Facebook .
Meta’s offensive comes at a time when Twitter is in a defensive position. At the end of 2022, shortly after its takeover, Elon Musk repeatedly described the company as close to the “bankruptcy”. After massive layoffs, he assured in February that he believed it possible to reach operating equilibrium in 2023. But in a much smaller version: turnover is expected to drop from 5 to 3 billion dollars between 2022 and 2023, did he foresee at the end of December. Despite Mr. Musk’s reassuring messages, Twitter’s advertising revenue in the United States was down 59% year on year in April-May, according to an internal memo obtained by the New York Times.
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