A bird-cage fight between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk has begun online, with Meta’s new Threads extension of Instagram hoping to tie Twitter in knots.
Discontent is rife among the Twitterati, with the microblog platform’s recent reading curbs and earlier verification pricing suddenly pushing users towards Meta’s alternative. In its first 16 years, Twitter acquired about 250 million daily active users. Threads has reportedly hit 100 million sign-ups in less than five days since launch. Its large Instagram user base would have surely helped rack up such numbers so fast, and if it keeps up this pace, the reigning ‘blue bird’ will finally have a rival worthy enough to end its microblog monopoly.
Success in this space is about network effects or crossing a point after which people feel the need to be on a particular platform just because others are there. Meta’s reach through its other social media networks eases its path in a way that was not available to other challengers of Twitter. The big irony is that Threads’ success would leave social media as a broad sector even more heavily under the dominance of Zuckerberg’s company. And that, from a user’s perspective, is not an outcome to welcome.
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Updated: 10 Jul 2023, 11:04 PM IST
