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| ▲페이스북, 인스타그램을 운영하는 메타가 텍스트 기반의 새 SNS 앱 ‘스레드’를 6일 출시했다. (AP/뉴시스) |
Meta has launched its new social media (SNS) app, Threads.
Threads made a surprise appearance on the Google Play app store for Android over the weekend to announce its launch. The Apple app store also took pre-download reservations. It launched simultaneously in more than 100 countries around the world at 8 a.m. ET on June 6. It is available for both Apple and Android smartphone users.
Thread is an SNS developed by Meta, which also operates Facebook and Instagram, since January this year. Even before its launch, it was recognized as a "rival" to Twitter, as it was aimed at users who were disappointed with the policies that changed after Tesla CEO Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter.
Threads has also been the subject of a recent spat between Musk and meta-CEO Mark Zuckerberg. When a Twitter user asked last month if Threads would be a rival to Twitter, Musk sarcastically replied, "I'm scared to death." When someone else advised, "Be careful, he does jiu-jitsu," Musk replied, "I'm ready for a cage fight." This prompted Zuckerberg to set up a fight on Instagram, which he described as "the Las Vegas Octagon."
Upon hearing this, Zuckerberg took to Instagram to ask where the fight would take place, to which Musk responded, "The Las Vegas Octagon." The Las Vegas Octagon is the octagonal ring where Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fights are held. Since then, there have been reports of the two men training in their respective jiu-jitsu disciplines and UFC President Dana White saying that "they're serious about a showdown," suggesting that they are preparing for a real-life "showdown.
There's also been a lot of interest in the threads that sparked the conflict. When I installed Threads myself, I found it to have a similar look and feel to Twitter: a text-centric app for short posts, with icons at the bottom of each post for heart, reply, and share to my feed.
Musk and Zuckerberg will be going head-to-head in the social media app market as well as in the cage. It's still too early to declare anyone a winner. We took a look at the features and differentiators of Threads, which just launched and is gaining market traction.
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| ▲(AP/뉴시스) |
Like Twitter, Threads is a "microblogging" app that lets you post short, text-based posts to communicate online. While Instagram is all about photos and videos, Threads is a text-centric platform. You can post up to 500 characters per post, and you can also include links to external websites or videos up to five minutes long.
For starters, if you're an Instagram user, the signup process is super simple. You don't need to sign up, you can simply log in with your Instagram handle.
The feed will feature content from accounts you follow, along with suggested content, and Meta will continue to add new features, such as enhanced feed content recommendations and improved search capabilities. It will also be updated to support ActivityPub, a protocol for decentralized social networks, so that it can interoperate with other apps that support the same protocol, such as Mastodon and WordPress.
Thread is reminiscent of Twitter in many ways, including the design of the feed and the way the service looks. In fact, Meta has often borrowed from its competitors.
When Facebook acquired Instagram, it introduced Snapchat-like "Stories" (posts that disappear after 24 hours); when TikTok became the center of the short-form video craze, it added a similar short-form feature called "Releases." When Clubhouse, an audio social networking platform, attracted a large number of users, Facebook launched "Live Audio Rooms." In addition, Facebook launched "Harvey," a photo-clipping platform similar to Pinterest, and "Bulletin," a newsletter service similar to Substack. In the Silicon Valley tech world, where copycatting is the order of the day and anything that becomes popular is copied, it has been pointed out that 'meta is overkill'.
According to tech publication The Verge, Meta's chief product officer, Chris Cox, referred to the thread during an all-hands meeting at the company's campus in Menlo Park, California, and said it "runs sanely," which could be interpreted as a slap in the face to Twitter, which he referred to as "the social network without sanity.
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| ▲페이스북, 인스타그램을 운영하는 메타가 텍스트 기반의 새 SNS 앱 ‘스레드’를 6일 출시했다. (사진제공=인스타그램) |
Over the years, Blue Sky, Mastodon, Damus, and others have challenged the social networking market, but none have been able to dethrone Twitter's dominance. In many cases, even their names are unfamiliar in Korea.
The industry believes Threads will be different. Thread's most powerful weapon is its "Instagram integration. According to market research firm Insider Intelligence, Instagram has 2 billion monthly active users. That's more than six times as many as Twitter (360 million), so if you can bring in existing Instagram users, you're going to have a head start on other social media apps.
When I first launched Threads, it automatically linked to my existing Instagram account, so there was no signup process or password entry, and I was able to use the same profile picture and bio I use on Instagram. I could follow anyone I followed on Instagram, and it automatically blocked any accounts I blocked on Instagram. With a high degree of compatibility for such a young app, analysts predicted that it would attract a lot of users early on.
The timing of the launch is also exquisite. "The timing is favorable for Meta," said Bloomberg, noting that "Twitter has been experiencing employee layoffs, content restrictions, and technical issues since Musk's acquisition, and ad revenue dropped 50 percent in March." In particular, Twitter recently introduced post reading limits, a move that angered many users, both domestically and internationally. One Korean Twitter user was even suspended for tagging Musk's account and cursing at him.
The launch of Threads by Meta, 17 years after Twitter, suggests that the company is actively seeking to absorb users who are leaving Twitter. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Meta has been moving aggressively in recent weeks to launch Threads - literally rowing against the tide.
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| ▲마크 저커버그 메타 CEO. (AP/뉴시스) |
However, the jury is still out on the success of the threads, especially with domestic users. For domestic users, Twitter's biggest appeal has always been its anonymity. It's also why Twitter has a strong fandom culture, and people tend to use it as a platform to get information about their fandom and interact with their dugme (dugme mates). However, Threads not only integrates with Instagram, but also collects a lot of data, including users' location information, contacts, purchase and search history, and more. This means that if you do something on Threads that you've been secretly doing on Twitter, you could end up blowing the whistle on your friends.
Some people are concerned about Meta's collection of personal information, which is why you can't use your Facebook and Instagram accounts unless you agree to Meta's "Collection and Use of Personal Information" terms. Meta collects personal information such as device information, websites you visit and cookie data, apps you use, purchases and transactions, ads you view and how you interact with them, content you create (posts, comments, audio), and the types of content you watch and how you interact with it. It uses this information to personalize ads.
However, in February 2019, the German Federal Cartel Office investigated Facebook and determined that collecting and processing personal information without user consent was an abuse of a dominant position and a violation of competition law.
Facebook took to the courts to try to stop its personalized ad sales, but the latest news is that it has lost. On Thursday, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that Germany's antitrust regulator, the Federal Cartel Authority, was not at fault for its involvement in Meta's privacy violations, according to Reuters and others. The EU's highest court has broadly recognized the authority of competition authorities to investigate so-called "big tech" privacy practices.
As a result, Meta's new social network, Threads, is currently not available in the EU. According to Bloomberg on May 5, the EU is in talks with companies about regulation under the Digital Markets Act, a new regulation that takes effect this year to prevent platform giants from abusing their market power. In the case of Threads, because it's based on Instagram, some have argued that the sharing of information between Threads and Instagram could fall foul of the Digital Markets Act.
Nevertheless, Threads got off to a strong start, gaining more than 5 million users within four hours of launch. As one user tweeted, "Threads are great. Twitter is over. Musk will get KO'd by Zuckerberg," to which Zuckerberg responded with a confident, "The first round is just beginning."
Will Zuckerberg be able to build an "anti-Twitter" following by rallying disappointed Twitter users? With the official launch less than a day away, we'll have to keep an eye on the thread for now.
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