Is Threads a Twitter-Killer?

Meta's newest app takes aim at an especially vulnerable moment for Twitter.

Last month, it looked as though Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg were headed to a cage match after the owner of Twitter seemed to challenge Facebook's founder and CEO to a fight, and the latter accepted. That came in response to a Tweet asking Musk about Zuckerberg's planned Twitter competitor, called Threads. 

Now, however, it looks as though we'll have to settle for a battle of the platforms, with Instagram Threads launching Wednesday, a day earlier than expected. Calling it a Twitter competitor might be underselling the impact the new app could have. In reality, I imagine it's more likely to be a Twitter killer.

I know it seems a little dramatic to predict the end of Twitter, especially after all the things Musk has done--many of which seem to be trying to get as many people as possible to stop using his overpriced new toy--and yet, Twitter hasn't gone away yet. 

Of course, the last week has been especially rough for Twitter, with Musk saying that the company is implementing rate limits that restrict the total number of views users are able to see in a day. In fact, if Threads does put an end to Twitter, it'll be less about Zuckerberg capitalizing on the chaotic state of Twitter, and more about how we got here in the first place. 

Specifically, there are three reasons Threads might be the end of Twitter:

1. Expectations Are Everything

One of the biggest problems for Twitter is that people have no idea what to expect. At any given moment, it seems as though the company is making changes entirely based on whatever Musk is thinking. Not only that, the explanations for various changes don't always make sense.

One of the main reasons the people who have stopped using Twitter have fled to alternatives is that they don't care for the decisions Musk has made and the chaos that has ensued. People crave certainty, and nothing about Twitter is certain right now.

That doesn't mean there aren't problems with Threads: For example, in the iOS App Store, you can check out Threads' privacy nutrition label. The short version is, it's collecting all the data--just like Instagram or Facebook. It's as if whoever filled out the form with the app submission simply chose "Select All." 

That's definitely not great, but it's exactly what you might expect from Instagram and its parent company, Meta. It's a platform based on showing you ads based on what it thinks you like. Privacy is not going to be a thing on Threads.

Look. I'm not a Facebook apologist by any means, but I do think there's something to be said for a company being upfront about who it is and what it's trying to accomplish. At least you know what to expect.

More importantly, however, if you like Threads, you can be reasonably sure that it will continue to function as you expect it to for a while. I'm sure Meta will continue to develop the product, and sometimes it will make changes people disagree with, but for the most part, you'll know exactly what you're going to get. 

2. The Scale Advantage

For people who wanted something like Twitter, but couldn't bring themselves to keep using the Musk-owned version, the biggest problem with almost every alternative is that they lack the network effect. There just aren't nearly as many people using Mastodon, Bluesky, or Post.news. 

If the thing you liked about Twitter is that all the people you wanted to hear from were there, that's not necessarily the case for all of the other options. Some people started using Mastodon. Some people are using Post.news. Other people still use Twitter, which still has far more users than any of the alternatives.

That's not a problem for Threads, which piggy-backs on Instagram's social graph. That's a big deal considering Instagram has more than 2 billion active users every month. For comparison, Twitter has around 400 million. 

And, since Instagram made it effortless to create an account using your Instagram profile, the onboarding process is infinitely easier than, say, Mastodon, which involves a lot of work that most people won't bother with. It's not unrealistic that--in a short time--Threads will have more users than Twitter and its competitors combined.

3. Advertiser-Friendly For the Win

Finally, Twitter's biggest problem is that it has a huge amount of debt compared to the revenue it generates. To make money, Twitter needs advertisers. 

It's taken steps to become more advertiser-friendly after many of them fled post-Musk-acquisition. Hiring its new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, was an important step, but it might not be enough. Many brands still aren't certain whether Twitter is safe or not. 

On the other hand, there isn't another company on earth better at building relationships with brands and advertisers than Instagram and Meta. It doesn't seem like it will take much effort to convince advertisers to shift whatever budget they planned to spend on Twitter, over to Threads. 

It also doesn't seem like it would take much of a shift to provide a final blow to Twitter. It can't make enough just charging users $8 a month for a blue checkmark, and it can't afford to lost any more ad revenue. Ultimately, this doesn't even seem like a fair fight. 

Musk fights back

One way, or another, it seems destined that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are going to fight. Now that Threads is live, it appears that instead of a cage match, we'll have to settle instead for a sternly-worded letter from Musk's attorney. The letter, which was first reported by Max Tani at Semafor, suggests that Meta hired former Twitter employees in order to use their knowledge of trade secrets to quickly launch a competing product:

Over the past year, Meta has hired dozens of former Twitter employees. Twitter knows that these employees previously worked at Twitter; that these employees had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information; that these employees owe ongoing obligations to Twitter; and that many of these employees have improperly retained Twitter documents and electronic devices. With that knowledge, Meta deliberately assigned these employees to develop, in a matter of months, Meta's copycat "Threads" app with the specific intent that they use Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property in order to accelerate the development of Meta's competing app, in violation of both state and federal law as well as those employees' ongoing obligations to Twitter.

In response, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone says that "No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee--that's just not a thing."

It's really not surprising that Musk would be upset by Threads, which launched Wednesday evening, and by Thursday morning had been downloaded more than 30 million times, making it the quickest app ever to reach that milestone. If you are the world's most avid Twitter user, and you spent $44 billion to buy the whole company and then spent the last nine-ish months breaking your very expensive new toy, that's very bad news. 

Still, the question of whether Threads is a copy of Twitter seems silly. As an idea, of course, it is. In both cases, you open the app, scroll through a feed of (mostly) text, along with links and photos, engage with things other people have posted, and share content of your own. It's the same idea--broadly speaking--as a handful of other platforms, like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Post.news. 

Here's the thing--Musk's biggest problem isn't ex-Twitter employees going to work for potential competitors. After all, they wouldn't be "former" employees had Musk not fired 80 percent of the people working for Twitter when he took over. Musk's real problem is that he opened this door. 

Twitter has been around for 17 years. It hasn't exactly been a secret that Zuckerberg often looked at the much smaller (by comparison) social network and envied its political, news, and cultural influence. For all of that time, Facebook, and then Meta never really made a serious effort to take it head on--until now.

Really, it wasn't until this past week that may have been the straw that broke the bird's back when Musk imposed rate limits that restricted the number of tweets you can view. If you aren't willing to pay for Twitter's $8 per month subscription, that number amounts to roughly a half hour of usage a day. And, you will no longer be able to use Tweetdeck without the monthly subscription to Twitter Blue.

It wasn't until Musk took over and started making changes that made a lot of people very angry (and many of them quit altogether), that Meta finally seized its opportunity. That opportunity did not exist during the previous 16 years of Twitter. Musk should worry less about sending cease and desist letters to Mark Zuckerberg, and spend a lot more time worrying about the product he owns.

The lesson is pretty simple: If you want to make sure no one copies your idea and steals all your customers, try building something that makes those users happy and leaves no opening for the competition. Instead of threatening to sue Meta for stealing Twitter's trade secrets, he should be working on the stuff that really matters.

An interview with Apple’s Laura Metz and Thomas Tan

Earlier this month, Apple introduced a new 15-inch MacBook Air. I've used one for a few weeks, and I stand by my earlier review, which is that it's exactly what you think it is -- and that's exactly what Apple needed it to be. It's a MacBook Air with a 25 percent larger display than the 13-inch version. If that sounds boring, I guess you could make that case, but sometimes boring is a good thing. More important, delivering on people's expectations is always a good thing.

There is, however, more to the story. The 15-inch MacBook Air says a lot about how Apple thinks about building the types of products its customers really want. It turns out, there's a valuable lesson for every company, which is that knowing what your customers want, and figuring out a way to give it to them without compromising on what makes them love your product in the first place is just good business.

I spoke with Laura Metz from Mac product marketing, and Thomas Tan, from Apple's enterprise product marketing, about why Apple Silicon is helping the company better serve its customers by building the products they really want. The 15-inch MacBook Air is a great example. 

"When we set out, we wanted to make a 15-inch MacBook Air," Metz told me. "But when you think of what the designs looked like previously, it just didn't work. It just did not say 'Air' to us. It was only with Apple Silicon where we were able to have all the right components to bring that larger display along with the battery life and performance that users would expect from a MacBook Air."

Those last few words are important--what matters is what "users would expect from a MacBook Air." If you can't make something that aligns with those expectations, you shouldn't make it at all. Of course, in the case of the 15-inch MacBook Air, there was a real hole in Apple's lineup.

"We knew there were users who wanted more screen real estate, but did not need the additional capabilities and performance of the 14- or 16-inch MacBook Pro," said Metz.  "We also know that the 15-inch PC laptop market is significant--that carries over into the enterprise space as well, where users are interested in having that larger display."

Read the rest of the interview in my column at Inc.com.