When I first saw the news of Threads app launch by Meta, my reaction was - Oh no, they stole LeoFinance's idea! LeoThreads may not have tens of millions of users yet, but their ambitions are more honorable than what any web2 companies would do. Building a social media platform, for long or short form content, is a very challenging task. It is hundred times more challenging building such platforms in a decentralized fashion. Eventually, decentralized networks will win, I hope.
This post is not about the competition and battles between centralized and decentralized platforms. It is about this strange conflict two billionaires publicly display, and don't hesitate to throw billions around. This drama is not even about the competition between companies. It is not about Twitter vs Threads. It is not about SpaceX or Tesla vs Meta. It is more some unknown quarrel between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
I find it odd that Elon Musk even owns Twitter now, and Zuckerberg owns Threads. And now this puts them in direct competition with each other. Twitter is not Musk's thing. Musk has been a super user of Twitter, was never a social platform entrepreneur. He ended up buying Twitter, just because he could. There could have been some ideas Musk had that he somehow would be able to make Twitter better. We haven't seen any of that yet. Please let me know if you have seen overall improvements. Then again, Musk kept changing his mind if he actually wanted to buy the Twitter, and when he decided to get out of the deal it was too late. Even after running Twitter for a little bit and making changes, he did see a need for someone else to run it. Now Twitter has a new CEO.
I doubt it was about making more money for Musk. He doesn't need any more. He already has plenty and already running other successful companies. One would think his time and efforts would be better spent focusing on Tesla, SpaceX, and others. Yes, he can run Twitter and many more companies. I am not questioning his
building abilities. My point is Twitter isn't where his building skills and talents shine. At least not yet. It seems Twitter is a hobby for Musk, and its success and failure wouldn't mean anything. On the hand I believe he cares deeply about the success and future of SpaceX and Tesla.
Similarly, microblogging platform wasn't Mark Zuckerberg's thing either. There is no doubt Zuckerberg was able to build the biggest social media platform with Facebook despite all the competition and challenges he faced in his journey. When Facebook was taking off, MySpace was a more successful company and Zuckerberg almost sold Facebook to MySpace. MySpace was too arrogant to accept the offer, and it was true they had the largest market share in social and didn't really see how they could fail. But they did fail due to their own doings, and Facebook did become successful due to its own building efforts, skills and talent. Facebook became a big tech, unstoppable. It outgrew itself and now rebranded to Meta, making Facebook is just one of its businesses.
Zuckerberg and his Meta have big ideas, and aren't planning to stop to build and innovate in their space, acquire more companies, and keep expanding their business. However, microblogging was never a thing neither Zuckerberg or Meta considered to be involved in. That wasn't their thing. Things they liked and saw fit to be part of the company they acquired, Instagram, Whatsapp, Oculus, etc. These were good buys and add value to their company and does seem to be useful for what they are trying to build in the future.
Twitter was never a competition to Facebook. It was just another platform out there and fulfilled some other purpose. Most importantly Twitter wasn't profitable. In the last decade they probably only had two years that was profitable. Twitter wasn't able to figure out ways to monetize user content and interactions like Facebook was able to do. For years it has been obvious that Facebook was a profitable business, and Twitter wasn't. If Twitter was a better business or in direct competition with Facebook, Zuckerberg would have built Threads like app long time ago.
The timing of Threads launch seems strange. It doesn't look like it is a good business strategy, but rather one billionaire displaying ego to another billionaire and trying to prove something. That something both Elon and Mark are trying to prove seems to be who has better ideas and who can execute them better. It seems personal.
It is not a secret Musk and Zuckerberg are among tech billionaire that do not really like each other. I don't know why. I don't know what may have happened in their past interactions. But they both have expressed less than respect towards each other. This may be a good entertainment for public to see this ongoing drama. But it is strange. Why can't they just be like other billionaires, buy yachts, islands, and fly to the space? They probably already do that. Maybe challenging each other and outdoing is more fun for billionaires. I don't know. I am not one, yet.
Corporations, especially the ones in tech do compete with other and sometimes try to get into spaces they are not in yet to gain some market share. This is a normal phenomena that happens all the time. But it doesn't look like what Meta is doing is the same thing. There was a time Google tried to build a social media platform, multiple times. Their biggest effort was when they launched Google+. Even that effort failed and they ended up discontinuing these platforms. This shows that money and resource may not be full answer. Google had all the best engineers, and talents around the world. If anybody would be successful in building a competition to Facebook that time, it would have been Google. But it didn't work. Sometimes acquisitions are better route. For example Google's Youtube purchase was a successful one, and now they dominate video sharing platform.
As impressive the sign ups for Threads were after it launched, with having hundred million accounts in days, this doesn't guarantee that Threads will become a success. Time will tell, but all the challenges are ahead. It is truly impressive how Meta was able to achieve this in a very short amount of time. Their initial thoughts of exploring the option of building a microblogging platform became public just few months ago. I think it was around March when Meta expressed these intentions. Now they have an app with millions of active accounts, and they haven't made it available to all countries yet. Maybe it will remembered as a good business decision in the future. I still doubt it was driven by a business intentions.
If Threads becomes a success it may actually be a bad thing for Meta. It would mean that Meta is becoming a huge monopoly that can't be ignored anymore. Hypothetically speaking, if Twitter fails in the future and disappears like MySpace did, and Threads becomes the biggest microblogging platform, it would mean Meta controls all the social media. Almost. This will attract regulatory and legal actions to break up the company to prevent it from becoming a monopoly. I doubt Meta would want such attention. For this reason, it might be in Meta best interest to keep companies around like Twitter, to present an illusion of competition, even though there was none.
Twitter has built a globally recognized brand. I is not easy to imagine Twitter disappearing anytime soon. It will probably will go through many more changes and they experiment with different things and see what works to make it a sustainable business. Even if they continue operating at loss, there is still value in being a globally recognized platform where people can go to express thoughts and share ideas and news.
So, is Threads a threat to Twitter? I believe so. But it is also an opportunity for Twitter to rediscover itself, innovate and become a better Twitter. Threads might just be the needed competition that can turn Twitter into something they haven't even thought about yet, and make it even a better network. Zuckerberg made his move. It is Musk's turn now.
Regardless what will happen with Twitter and Threads in the future, I root for decentralized system as it is time to change the web and break these monopolies. Web3 is coming. But it will be up-to people to choose.