This past weekend saw the launch of a new social media platform called ‘Threads’. It’s a text based app that is being hailed as a Twitter replacement (apparently Twitter is threatening to sue). The app was built by the Instagram team. This new social space was quickly filled with unprecedented user sign ups within hours, beating every other platform ever launched. So what’s it all about and how will Threads social app feature in the greater scheme of digital marketing for business? Read on.
First up let’s be straight about the business side. Threads is not currently the place for business. If you jump in right now and talk business or try to sell you’re not going to win. But let’s see how long that lasts.
So what is Threads?
Basically, Threads is a giant public conversation where it’s totally cool to jump into any thread and have a say. It’s been likened to being in ‘recess at school’ and reading people’s ‘stream of consciousness’ and that pretty much does sum up the current vibe in there. It’s notably fun and high energy. Words like ‘unhinged’ are being used to describe the current post style with social media managers apparently being given free rein over the weekend to just go for it (probably unheard of in corporate circles). If you need to get approval for posts and have sign-off then it’s going to be difficult to win on Threads.
Threads is:
- Unplanned
- Ad hoc
- Conversation based
- Doesn’t use hashtags
- Has no DM’s
- Has no content search function
- Is currently not business focussed
The Threads home feed
We immediately wanted to ‘train’ the home feed so it can be tailored to what we want to see because at first glance it’s quite random. Very random! But here’s my best guess on what it shows (yes truly guessing because there’s really not enough data yet to know):
- Content from people you don’t follow – I’m guessing based on interaction and also suspect that some of the Instagram data is influencing this.
- Content from accounts that you’ve tapped through to look at
- Content on similar topic to content you’ve tapped through to look at
- Content that the people you follow have interacted with (replied or liked)
- Replies seem to be very important for visibility – back this up with the fact that there’s an actual ‘reply’ tab and no Direct messaging and I think this is going to be the key metric. I love that it also means your interaction is on record
- Content from people you follow hits the home feed too but many of those I follow are not putting much content out yet so I am not seeing much yet and can see I did miss some content when I checked profiles
- The top Threads in terms of replies are often a few words – even though Threads offers more characters than Twitter
I think what the above means is that what you interact with is very important. We know this from other platforms but here it seems to have a greater weighting and given that there’s no content search feature so far and no hashtags then that makes sense.
Search in Threads
The lack of hashtags had me using the search field and this is very heavily influenced by the text in your profile. That is also linked to your Instagram account as you’ll see.
So that’s my quick ‘n dirty wrap of the Threads app. I’ll be back to update this some more so keep an eye out.
Enjoy your week in digital
Alicia
UPDATE: Read the Threads announcement by Instagram