Earlier this year we described a new platform from Meta, which was launched in July 2023. We are talking about Threads, which debuted on the Polish market late last year. It is a social networking platform based on short content. It quickly became apparent that it was meant to be a response to the problems that plagued the former Twitter from the early days of Elon Musk’s reign. In short, Meta wanted to take over some of the disgruntled users of the current X platform.
More social media apps have it that they have a hard time establishing themselves in the minds of users over the long term. In the last 5 years, only TikTok has achieved the expected success. In the meantime, we had Clubhouse or BeReal. A year after its debut, it seems that Threads is the first platform in years to make a permanent mark in the pantheon of familiar apps. In August of this year, Threads announced that it already has 200 million monthly active users. This is a very good result when comparing it to X, which has about 600 million monthly active users. With such a growth rate, Threads is becoming a serious threat to X. Assessing engagement, Threads users spend an average of 30 minutes on the site, and this still compares poorly with X, on which we have an average of more than 5 hours per month. Last year, Zuckerberg mentioned that Threads would become a platform with more than a billion users. Does it have a chance to do so? The strategy they’ve taken is to focus on countries where X doesn’t have as large an audience of users – Japan, for example.
Threads has been developed gradually, with new features appearing in the following months of its operation – including the implementation of Direct Message, which allows you to communicate by integrating with your Instagram inbox. The use of hashtags, on the other hand, is somewhat difficult, as you can only add 1 hashtag to 1 post. For this reason, it is important to choose the most appropriate one, whether for the content or the target audience. It is also worth remembering , not to use crossposting from Facebook and Instagram. It is still a hindrance to longer scheduling-based posts, as you can only save a working post, but there is no scheduling option. However, the entire functionality of the app lacks the most important tool, i.e. statistics of a single publication – instead, you only get aggregate statistics for an account connected to Instagram.
Without active exchange of ideas and interaction on Threads, it is difficult to count on long-term success, so a time commitment is necessary. It is foolhardy to think about duplicating content from other Meta apps. The platform is used for industry discussions, sharing knowledge and information from the market. A series of thematic publications will work here, creating short content in abundance, but engaging the user. It’s not a place to replicate Facebook’s carousel.
You ask, how do you go about it? A few key tips:
What we are most interested in is advertising capabilities, which are expected to appear according to the announcement at the end of 2024. Zuckerberg has linked the implementation of ads to the need to reach the ceiling of 1 billion users. The first screenshots of sponsored posts can already be found online. Therefore, let’s not be surprised when an additional function and ad placement will soon appear in the ad manager.
We hope that after this article you will answer the question “is it worth being here”. Based on a year’s observation, in our opinion, the application has the potential for further growth, especially since Meta is strongly developing the project. The inclusion of ads on the site is only a matter of time, so we should already focus on developing our profile to build a community and its involvement around our brand.
