What is the point of Threads?
Feels like the Official App of Small Talk at the Office Pizza Party
Facebook’s Threads is 5 days old. It has reached 100 million signups.
These are my observations after 5 days of Threads:
Getting excited about Threads is like getting excited that a new Starbucks opened in Times Square.
It is hopping in your Toyota Camry, blasting some Imagine Dragons, and heading to Walmart with a big smile on your face.
It is forwarding your coworker a funny Progressive Insurance commercial.
It is a high school reunion at Dave & Busters.
Even though it was heralded as a “Twitter Killer,” it is not Twitter: It’s lousy at breaking news, it’s not chronological, and the algorithm seems intent on showing me Cool Guy YouTubers and Stolen Meme Pages and Applebee’s having an epic convo with Slim Jim.
Threads feels a lot like Facebook Newsfeed. It’s chaotic, loud, often devoid of value, larded with Brands trying to hand you pamphlets.
The only difference between Threads and Facebook Newsfeed is that Threads launched as a Nuclear Spite Missile aimed at Elon Musk’s Twitter.
But Threads smells like Newsfeed to me. I keep waiting for a high school classmate to try to sell me Tupperware.
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Aside from Brands, the group that has embraced Threads the tightest seems to be Journalists. This is fascinating to me. Hasn’t Mark Zuckerberg inflicted enough pain on you?
With the pivot-to-video, the gutted newsrooms, the fake viewership numbers, the doomed partnerships, the pulled funding, the private dinners with Ben Shapiro, the broken promises?
You’re gonna let him pull the football again?
Journalists trusting Mark Zuckerberg with a Twitter replacement feels like VCs giving money to Elizabeth Holmes for another blood-testing machine. I wish them well. I have a feeling it’s going to suck.
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I use Threads. Every once in a while I will get served a post from Mark Zuckerberg gloating about the popularity of Threads. That is always my signal to close Threads.
Amazon does not autoplay a little video of Jeff Bezos pissing on the grave of my local bookstore. That’s a smart design choice.
There was something exciting about a brand new social network, wasn’t there? One that was not conceived of and micromanaged by one of the familiar, disappointing billionaires?
I’m sticking with Bluesky, which feels less like a tourist trap; it’s quieter and less desperate. I hope it opens up to everyone soon.
Threads is clearly sticking around for a while, so I’ll be there out of professional necessity. And of course, a lot of my former Twitter feed has already migrated there.
But there is something about Threads that feels like driving to the airport during rush hour. You might end up somewhere good but by God is the journey going to be painful.