Fischer: Shiny new Threads

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

It looks like I’m not the only one moving these days.

Last week Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, surprise launched Threads, a new platform directly designed to compete for Twitter’s place in the social media ecosystem.

With it becoming increasingly apparent that Twitter owner Elon Musk won’t be getting into a literal cage match with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, the latter is instead hitting the former where it hurts in a more metaphorical sense.

So far, as of time of writing, Threads has been signing up about a million users per hour since it’s become available. That’s pretty impressive considering the woeful lack of basic features that are said to be coming down the line. In the unlikely event it sustains that rate, it will rival Twitter’s user base by the end of the month.

I’ve been in on the fun myself and it’s interesting to start fresh on a new social media platform.

The first thing to do, of course, is to rebuild your list of people you follow. That in itself is kind of an eye-opening experience. Similar to moving, you really get a sense of what you do and don’t want to take with you.

Going through the accounts I follow on Twitter, less than a quarter of them are making the leap to Threads. Some accounts simply aren’t there yet. Others are accounts that I’ve decided to follow in the past and now have to re-evaluate if I care enough to continue following on a new platform.

Of course, many of the accounts I follow on Twitter are no longer active anyway. I’ve found that I follow a surprising number of official accounts for defunct businesses or products that I’ve otherwise all but forgotten about. Some I don’t even recognize or know why I followed in the first place.

And then there are the accounts of people that are no longer with us. Kevin Conroy, the legendary Batman voice actor, and Jason David Frank, the fan-favorite Power Ranger actor, were both fairly active on Twitter until their untimely deaths last year. I haven’t had the heart to un-follow their accounts yet.

Of course, once I’ve curated my personal Threads experience, I’ll probably play with it for a few days, make a few posts of my own, and then largely ignore it unless I’m looking for some specific information or am just incredibly bored.

As I’ve noted before, I’m pretty neutral when it comes to the pros and cons of social media. I’m not blind to the problems that they’ve enabled across society, but I also won’t deny the value they offer. I dislike how social media can, and has, been used to spread drama, hate, and misinformation, but at the same time being able to navigate the various platforms has been beneficial both personally and professionally.

For my own use, I’ve never really understood the appeal of sharing every mundane detail of my life or fleeting thought that passes through my head. Granted, I have this column to scratch that particular itch so my experience may be different. I’m content using social media to post my vacation photos and share the occasional news article.

So while I recognize the value of social media, I wouldn’t shed a tear if both Meta and Twitter completely shut down tomorrow.

Which means I’m mostly just enjoying the spectacle of watching one obscenely wealthy and problematic billionaire get some shots in on another obscenely wealthy and problematic billionaire.

The slow-motion train wreck of Elon Musk’s $44 billion vanity purchase has been an unending source of amusement, and while Meta is doubtlessly deserving of the same fate, at the very least it has been fun watching these monsters duke it out.

It’s like Godzilla vs. King Kong. I don’t necessarily want Threads to win, but I do want Twitter to lose.

— Travis Fischer is a news writer for the Charles City Press and should check to see if he’s gotten a BlueSky invite yet.