It’s a social media platform that is trending on almost every other social media platform out there. The newest contender in a long(ish) line of contenders in the market trying to replace (or at capture a portion of the audience) of twitter.

But none of those competitors was actually able to put a significant dent on twitter’s userbase. Will this be any different?

That’s not the question I’m gonna answer (lol). I don’t really care about threads’ competition with twitter. What I care about is whether its usable or not.

Spoiler Alert: Its more than usable

Threads is pulling all of its audience from instagram. And while many of these people are first-timers on a microblogging app, many more have been on twitter/facebook/tumblr etc.

This means that the app isn’t a dry wasteland like mastodon on substack notes. You can find many people (mostly from your instagram but people outside that too) to engage with.

The algorithm seems to be less aggressive than facebook (but who knows, its a closed-source app so its hard to tell) but it nonetheless keeps sharing content from accounts it thinks you’ll like. And as of now, there’s no way to turn this off so its a bummer.

Okay so the platform is usable. But can it actually beat twitter and become a digital town square with over a billion users (as Zuck claimed)?

Is it better than twitter? Not yet

Threads is good. But its not exactly better than twitter in any meaningful way (other than maybe the fact that its not run by Musk, but Zuck isn’t any better either). Here’s why I think that is the case:

• The audience isn’t cemented yet. Yes there are many people to engage with, with more coming in every day. But are they here to stay? Will they get addicted to Threads the same way they’re addicted to instagram? Will all of the important political commentators/activists that made twitter special make an appearance on Threads too? The answer to this question is “not yet.”
• The algorithm is annoying and there’s no way to turn it off. My feed was full of annoying with meme pages we used to follow in 2013. We don’t want those anymore but they’re what we have and there’s no way to change it instantly (one might need to tailor the algorithm for their own account through the content they like/share but not all users would want to make such a commitment).
• It just doesn’t have all of twitter’s functionality yet. No hashtags, no trending page, no spaces, not even a search function that can search threads, not just accounts (the lack of DMs is refreshing tho).

All of these things show that threads, while very usable, is still nowhere near twitter in terms of audience, content and functionality.

The Verdict

Its not the perfect twitter replacement. But its nice to use. It has a pretty user interface. It’s engaging and easy to use. And who knows, its a new platform, and some of your threads might explode and you could become a big account on the platform (first-comer advantage or whatever).

Its worth a try, and may even become good enough for you to ditch annoying twitter.