Twitter was established back in 2006 after which it grew to an astounding size. For a long time, most celebrities used to stay away from social media apps but Twitter remained popular among big names and grew even more popular as the years passed by. Around this time, Facebook was also rising in prominence and social media apps began to become viable forms of communication. However, Facebook quickly lost relevance among the younger generations whereas Twitter remained popular.
As a globally used website with artists making business off its far reach, Twitter continued to grow as a platform in both positive and negative aspects. Other social media platforms began to view it as a place for discourse and heavy topics.
“I have a Twitter account, but I have rarely used it since I don’t like the interface. It’s also a joke in internet culture that Twitter is a toxic place which has too many people expressing outrage and hate speech, and I’ve found this to be true. With Elon Musk buying Twitter, the changes he made to it have annoyed even regular Twitter users. At this point, I have almost completely dropped off Twitter,” says 31-year-old Ved Prabhudesai from Taleigao.
The 280 word limit on each tweet also served as the basis for one of Twitter’s most notable trademark: Twitter threads. Twitter threads are self explanatory.
They are a thread of tweets that the original poster makes by replying to their own tweets so that it connects with the previous one. This was originally a way to work around the word limit of tweets but soon became a popular trend. People began making Twitter threads to post a series of related pictures, information, or create short stories. This allowed both artists and writers to flourish on the platform enough to make a living.
Unfortunately, after Elon Musk took up office, he has made a variety of changes to the platform, making members pay for the iconic blue tick and keeping a 600 tweet view limit. These new rules have impacted the entire platform and users and scorn towards Elon Musk’s unnecessary additions arose.
This month Meta, owned by Mark Zuckerburg, has put forth a new integrated platform with Instagram. Labelling it as ‘Threads’ is far from subtle and it offers features alike to Twitter except the character limit is stretched to 500 and videos can be up to 5 minutes long. A move that was akin to announcing war.
“Twitter is my primary social media app. I like the anonymity and non-personal content on it. I think Mark Zuckerberg created Threads as he saw an opportunity to replace Twitter at the time due to the discontent among the Twitter users over the prices and new regulations on Twitter,” says Gautam Sajilal, a 21-year-old residing in Margao. As someone who was one of the first to sign up for an account, he also adds, “Threads removed the main selling point of the Twitter which is the anonymity and non-personal content. It remains connected to your Instagram account and hence can’t be used as a fan account or a content account.”
Though Twitter is certainly far from perfect after all the alterations made by Elon Musk this year, Threads has its own limitations. Creating a Threads account automatically binds it to your Instagram account and deleting one also deletes the other.
“Threads are known popularly as Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Twitter killer’. As of now there isn’t too much difference except that users that have a high following on Twitter have lower responses on Threads. It remains to be seen how Threads will develop, and whether it will turn out exactly like Twitter, or not,” states Ved. He also gives his opinion on Meta’s decision to bind it with Instagram, “I think it’s quite a smart move on Meta’s part that deleting Threads requires the user to delete Instagram as well. Since it’s an alternative to Twitter which already has a huge user base, many people are likely to stop using it within the first few days. But having to delete their IG account would make them think twice. I like that it’s a new social media platform where users can start off fresh. Twitter had the feature to show the reach and number of views that each individual tweet/post had, hopefully Threads adds this too.”
“Threads are similar to Twitter but uses existing Instagram account to sign you up and are fundamentally better,” says 28-year-old Palash Volvoikar from Ponda, “It gives you a chronological feed and it’s an easy way to onboard although, they should allow a dedicated account creation option soon.”
Currently, Threads are still in its initial stages. As users increase, the possibility of it allowing accounts without an Instagram linked is a possibility. Any application only improves with user interaction. Though usage has dropped by 50 percent this week compared to the week that it launched, there’s no doubt that Threads has already made its own impact as a social media platform.