Threads: Why Meta's Answer to Twitter Matters for Your Business
We’re sure you’ve heard of the newest social media app: Threads. If not, let us break it down for you. Meta launched Threads earlier last month as a new app for sharing updates and joining public conversations. Seen by some as a refuge from the growingly divisive discourse on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter. Threads shares many of X’s core features. So, why should a company invest its time, money and resources into this platform if it already resembles a social media heavy-hitter?
In today’s fast-paced digital world, communication plays a vital role for all businesses, as they strive to build and maintain strong connections with their audiences. Threads widens the range of opportunities for making these connections. Here’s how:
Casting a wide net through interoperability
If you want to change users’ habits, reduce friction as much as possible. Thanks in large part to the ease with which Instagram users can transfer their IDs to their new Threads profile, Meta claimed its new platform had already gained 117 million users within less than a month after launching. But the interoperability doesn’t stop there, Meta promises that creators and businesses on Threads will be able to connect to ActivityPub, an open social networking protocol, to which other social apps will connect. Threads will serve as a springboard to spread content beyond the immediate cohort of Threads users to other apps, widening the reach of content, and, therefore, your company’s messaging.
Loosening the limits on your content
As a business crafting a public statement, condensing text to the pithy 280-character limit imposed on Twitter can be frustrating. At worst, it can be an impediment to your goal of providing the public with the necessary details of a situation.
Many Twitter users bypass this limit through two methods. They either tediously post tweets one after another into a “thread,” raising the risk of one of the tweets getting taken out of context, or they design a visual displaying the text of the full statement they would have preferred to just type into the text box. In a crisis, every second counts and every detail matters. You don’t want to spend extra time drafting and approving a visual, and you don’t want to create extra opportunities for misinterpretation.
Threads offers some welcome latitude. Users can post texts of up to 500 characters accompanied by as many as ten images per post in carousel form (Twitter only allows four images).
A baggage-free alternative
Long reputed as the most combative of the major social media platforms, Twitter as a company is now perhaps the most politically polarizing as well. According to a Pew Research poll conducted five months after Elon musk’s takeover, a quarter of American Twitter users say they are unlikely to use it a year from now. Partisan leanings may especially be a factor. By several measures, enthusiasm among Democratic-leaning users towards the idea of remaining on the platform is much weaker than among their Republican counterparts. Elon Musk’s executive actions, his comments in favor of presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, as well his choice to host the latter’s campaign announcement, seem to have irked many Americans on the other side of the aisle.
For all his faults, Zuckerberg has avoided the controversy Elon Musk has basked in, and he has managed to keep his work as a CEO separate from his political flirtations. Threads feels like a fresh start for those who enjoy the back-and-forth approach to discourse. And as Instagram users continue to take the leap to it, companies would be wise hedge their bets on Threads as the safest alternative.
By switching to Threads, companies can strengthen their relationships with clients, partners and the wider public. If you need assistance in crafting the best messaging for social media, contact Holler Strategies today.
