Twitter competitor Threads: is it worth the hype?

Last week, all social media platforms have were abuzz with Meta's new text-based social site, Threads, a direct imitation of Twitter. With a simple and swift sign-up, many have flocked to the app more out of social pressure and curiosity than a genuine alternative switch to the long-standing Twitter app.

Since Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, the company has gone downhill, in terms of services and features provided to its users, limiting many essential features to premium subscribers rather than a free service for general users. While many alternatives, like Mastodon and BlueSky, quickly emerged as Twitter users criticised the company and the CEO over their policies; none of them picked up in popularity as Meta's Threads.

Meta conveniently launched its app right when Twitter had introduced ridiculous policies over the limit of the number of tweets a user can view in a day, and disabling tweet views if not logged in the account. With its simple and easy sign-up via Instagram, Threads is quick to set up, already importing all your followers from Instagram to the app, so the timeline is immediately full with posts.

Very much designed like Twitter, with similar functional icons, Threads has pretty much copied the original, including options to retweet/reshare a particular post with followers and like it. Meta has, however, failed the include hashtag trend following but has allowed a bigger character limit than Twitter for posts, with a maximum of 500 characters.

The hype compelled many celebrities and online bloggers to join the app, creating a buzz and a stream of memes mocking how the seamless switch from Twitter has grabbed users from all over the world, who now have another social media platform to manage and keep up with. Even users who hadn't used Twitter or weren't arduous fans of the app, flocked to the app to be a part of the fuss.

When asked what most people thought of the app, many called it a knock-off version of Twitter and a platform most will get bored with soon. Others were reluctant to sign-up because of Meta's unreasonable policy that would delete the Instagram profile if the Threads account is deleted.

Though the app has garnered a tremendous amount of frenzy and highest sign-ups in a day, it doesn't seem that the app would uphold Twitter users' expectations or serve as an alternative platform, despite Musk's and new CEO, Linda Yaccarino's policies. The app is already being criticised for not including Politics and removing users from the app when they engaged in political threads.

While Threads has been rapidly gaining user sign-ups and hype, unless Meta launches unique outstanding features on Threads, the timer on Mark Zuckerberg's new project will soon go off, and Twitter will still retain its position in the face of its biggest comPetitor.