Will Threads weave a new story for Meta?

Read time: 5 minutes

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Meta only needs 1 in 4 Instagram users to use Threads monthly for it to be as big as Twitter.

Meta has a reputation for copying features and apps. Here is a list of what they copied from where earlier:

Some of these moves have succeeded, while others have not.

The initial numbers of Threads have been astounding.

Threads got 70 million+ signups within 2 days of its launch.

Users on Threads had already posted more than 95 million posts and 190 million likes in the first 24 hours as per The Verge.

The app still has plenty of room to grow, having not yet launched in Europe, where Instagram’s chief said there is still some regulatory complexity to navigate.

While these numbers are great, there is more to the app apart from the initial thrust of signups.

The success of a social media platform is a vicious cycle between content by creators and user engagement.

The advantage that Threads has is- it has an audience. Courtesy Instagram.

Getting 70 million+ signups in less than 2 days is no joke.

The team at Meta is also good at coming up with habit-forming features that keep a user engaged.

Yea, some of these features are copied (or inspired as they say it) but because of the sheer audience base, some of these features fly for Meta resulting in better engagement and eventually a better business model.

As of date, it is easy to share your thread on the Instagram story, which happens with a click.

In the coming days, however, Meta will integrate both these apps further. More feature-sharing, easy cross-navigation and content-sharing features will be rolled out.

The move of Meta to use Instagram as the base audience and build Threads can also potentially give rise to the social media clone wars.

Imagine this; how about Twitter comes up with a clone app that is rival to Instagram reels and Twitter users can seamlessly migrate their followers from Twitter to the new app?

Yea, it may not be as big as Instagram but there is no harm in being an alternative to Instagram, even a 5% market share of Instagram is a massive business to begin with.

Or YouTube starts another clone app like Twitter where opinion sharing on videos, creators, and trends is done on a deeply integrated app with YouTube.

Why not?

Whether will we see these app clone wars coming into action only time will tell.

Let’s decode the Threads app a little more.

Will Threads be able to keep the users Hooked?

As per the famous book on Habit-forming products by Nir Eyal- Hooked, there are 4 phases of building a Habit forming product:

What are Triggers?

Triggers need a foundation and layer upon layer (of continued behaviour change) to be completely formed.

There are 2 types of triggers: External and internal trigger.

External triggers- These are bits of information from users’ surroundings that prompt them to perform an action.

In the case of Threads, external triggers were very strong.

There was so much anticipation about this new app and the way it was carried by the internet and Zuckerberg himself, it is unlikely Instagram users would ignore the FOMO. So external triggers are the trigger that happens outside the app to push you to download the app and Meta did a great job here.

However, they will have to consistently maintain these external triggers. I do not see this as a challenge, Meta knows how to be in the news.

With a strong PR push, and word of mouth from content creators and consumers Meta should be able to maintain external triggers for a sustained period of time.

The rage between Zuck and Elon itself acts as a trigger.

Internal triggers: For Threads to truly become a habit-forming product, its triggers need to move from the external forms to the internal.

Internal triggers are driven by users’ emotions and associations stored in their memory.

Trying to rid oneself of negative emotions like boredom and loneliness are powerful triggers for using a particular product.

As a product relieves these negative emotions repeatedly, our mind subconsciously begins to associate it with this relief.

The biggest internal trigger with threads is an instant social connection that one can build with the same followers they have on Instagram.

Creators themselves will play a major role in providing the internal triggers here. Meta will reward creators to migrate the audience to Threads with better engagement rates, followers and eventually brand deals.

Also, As Zuck was tweeting how Threads is gaining signups in the first 2 days, many people who joined Threads also saw organic growth in followers and provided the internal trigger of getting rid of loneliness and boredom from the same old Instagram interface for a change.

What is Action?

An action is where the user should be motivated enough and should be able to perform the action with minimal effect.

On the morning of 5th July when I opened my Instagram, I was bombarded with stories about threads.

Post-downloading the app because of external triggers, the onboarding process took less than a minute and instantly I gained 1000s of followers by the mid-day.

By the end of the 3rd day, there were 10,223 people following me on Threads.

So it took less time, the degree of effort required was low, no mental labour was needed, there was high social acceptability of the product, and it also disrupted my current routine of checking Instagram every morning.

All these are elements of simplicity that drive the action for a user to use the app.

The lower the time, money, physical effort or mental labour involved, the more socially acceptable it is, or the least deviation it requires from a user’s existing routine, the easier it is for her to perform an action.

Consequently, the greater the likelihood of the product becoming a habit.

What is the variable reward?

Variable rewards, and not just any rewards, make users come back to a product again and again by reinforcing the motivation.

Finite variability can become boring after a while, while infinite variability sustains user interest.

You constantly swipe through reels because you do not know what emotion the next reel will trigger, there is infinite variability.

Thus, variable rewards should not only satisfy one or more user needs but also keep them interested in engaging again (and again) with the product.

There are three types of variable rewards:

Rewards of the tribe – those that satisfy our social needs by making us feel more important and accepted, e.g. Likes, shares and comments on Threads. Since the followers were already transported from Instagram, new Thread accounts also witnessed the great engagement.

Rewards of the hunt – those that satisfy our basic survival instincts by helping us acquire things we consider important, like cash and information, e.g. the mix of mundane and relevant content on Threads entices users to keep looking for more. Creators creating more such content will provide for the rewards of the hunt for users.

Rewards of the self – those that help us in self-determination by providing a sense of accomplishment, e.g. great organic reach of the content on Threads as of now gives a sense of mastery to the users.

What is the investment?

This last phase of the model is where the user is asked to do a bit of work.

The investment generally comes in the form of asking the user to give some combination of time, data, effort, social capital or money.

In the case of Threads, the user investment it can ask for is the time and data.

More time people spend on the app, the more data footprints they will leave, making it easier for Meta to target users with relevant advertising.

While the user is already swimming in an ocean of dopamine in anticipation of getting a reward from the previous step, they will invest more time on the platform and user time is a goldmine for Meta.

My anticipation is Threads will come up with many features in the coming weeks that will entice users to make an investment of time on the platform.

The challenge:

As per a user overlap study between different platforms by Hootsuite, till Jan 2021, 60% of the people who use Instagram are also active on Twitter.

This number would shrink further when we look at active Twitter users.

The point is; the Twitter audience is different from the Threads audience in some ways.

If you look at creator accounts purely, at least in India, there are a few creators that are big on Twitter and Instagram.

Hence, for threads to work, if they continue to maintain the stand of being a textual platform, there is a steep journey ahead to make the behavioural change of Instagram users who like short, snappy content to move to a text-based platform.

I see this as the major challenge in the growth story of Threads.

So will Threads weave a new growth story for Meta?

Early days. Getting the initial thrust of users is great but are the triggers, action, variable reward and investment needed enticing enough for the primarily Instagram audiences to use a text based platform like Threads? Only time will tell.

Also, whether this new phenomenon lead to the war of clone apps as I mentioned above? Will be interesting to see.

I so want a rival to Instagram now.

How fast the wave of trend and conversation changes. In the last few months, we have moved from ChatGTP to Bard to Generative AI to now Threads.

For you as a professional, take advantage of these advanced mediums to further grow your carrier.

There are marketers out there that have started using Integrated and standalone applications of AI as I detailed in my last newsletter.

That’s it for today folks.

My colleague Aarti has launched A to Z of content masterclass. If you want to learn how to create content to engage and convert users, I highly recommend you take this up.

We are just a week away from A to Z of SEO masterclass as well. 40 people have signed up and we are closing the registrations at 50.

Also, as I mentioned earlier on my Instagram, we will only do this class once in 3-4 months.

Have an awesome Sunday ahead.

Cheers,

Apurv