Meta's Threads: Another Google+ in the making?

Millions of users, but no exclusive content?

Jul 17, 2023

Remember Google+? The Facebook killer product by Google that …died without anyone missing it?

What really happened with Google+ is best explained via this chart

Within 4 years of launch, Google+ had 2.2 billion users (!!!) - of which only 4-6 million were active and importantly, ONLY 9% published any (public) content.

Let’s talk about..Threads

A great start with 150million users within a few days of launch!

(honestly the numbers should have been more as Meta invited all of its 1.8Bn Instagram users to threads and enabled them to import their followers from Insta)

But the reality? There is very little stickiness in the platform as there is literally NO EXCLUSIVE content in the platform. Most of the content is from the Insta / FB influencers - which is cringe and lacks authenticity.

Threads needs a usecase

Twitter’s usecase was and even today, is defined by this question

What is happening?

Twitter has been the de-facto platform for discovering news and newsmakers (politicians/authors/makers/founders etc etc).

Threads? Here is the usecase as per the Adam Mosseri, Insta head and Threads founder

The goal is to create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter (and other platforms) that are interested in a less angry place for conversations, but not all of Twitter.
Politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads – they have on Instagram as well, to some extent – but we’re not going to do anything to encourage those verticals.
We are definitely focusing on kindness and making this a friendly place:

Well, I am not sure what does this mean, but Id’ love to see less of Insta influencers and more real people on Threads.

What has been your experience with Threads? Do share in the comments.

Btw, see you on Threads.