Threads will beat the other Twitter clones

When it comes to making fires, survival experts have a range of options. Some prefer the classic flint and steel. Some like the challenge of rubbing sticks. Others will use mirrors and glass to get things going.

But if we’re being honest… the BEST way to start a fire… is to use a flamethrower.

Meta’s new Threads app uses the flamethrower approach, and it makes the competition look silly. I’ll come back to this analogy later. First, let me set some context.

Attack of the Clones

Threads is a microblogging platform, and until recently, there was only one of those: Twitter. So let’s call a spade a spade – Threads is a Twitter clone…

Twitter

Twitter was co-founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, who handed the reins to Parag Agrawal in 2021, who had the reins brutally ripped from his hands by Elon in 2022. Since then, Twitter has suffered a string of self-inflicted wounds, including: chasing away advertisers, trying and failing to monetize verification (aka blue checks), and cutting the company’s value to 1/3 of Elon’s purchase price… As its 350M+ annual active users have gotten frustrated, the attack of the Twitter clones has begun.

Bluesky

Bluesky was founded by Jack Dorsey (yes! The same guy!) while he was still running Twitter, and released as a public beta in February 2023. It’s a microblogging site AND a decentralized platform for microblogging, so that a single centralized company isn’t making all the decisions around content moderation, user privacy, and data portability. Dammit the jargon monster strikes again! The microblogging site is just the Twitter clone. The platform is the interesting bit… Dorsey is basically allowing users more choice. You could go to the Dorsey approved and moderated Bluesky first. Then, you could decide you don’t like Dorsey’s content moderation policy, so you seamlessly take your stuff to “Bluesky Uncensored” (not real, just making the point), which some other leadership team runs and makes policy decisions about. Given how popular Twitter was with politicians and reporters while Jack was CEO, and how they used to haul him up to Congress to testify about his decisions, it’s funny (but not surprising) that he’s gravitating to this decentralized platform approach. Bluesky currently has ~300K users and $8M in seed funding.

Mastodon

Just like the Bluesky platform, Mastodon is a decentralized platform. Users can choose which “instance” to join, and that instance comes with its own policies, users, and vibe. Mastodon was founded by Eugen Rochko in 2016, it’s crowdfunded and managed by a non-profit, and it doesn’t have ads. Even though they’re both decentralized platforms, they run on different protocols, so you can’t move between them. Bluesky operates on the AT Protocol (one of the only services on that protocol), and Mastodon operates on the ActivityPub protocol (many use this, including Automattic’s Wordpress.com, and now Threads). In my opinion, Mastodon is clunkier and more complicated than it should be… but that hasn’t stopped it from racking up ~1M active users, albeit at a much slower growth rate than Bluesky.

Post.News

This one, founded by Noam Bardin (former CEO of Waze) is more of a pure play Twitter clone. I’ve tinkered with it, and there are two things worth noting. First, they innovated on the upvote by adding micropayments, letting users leave a “tip” on posts they like, of which Post gets a cut. Some news outlets – especially Reuters – also use the tipping function to gate articles… you can only read them if you pay. The suggested tip on all posts is 25 cents, and most of the gated articles cost 5 cents or less. Honestly, I haven’t loved being asked constantly to pay to read things, but I can see how this helps entice creators… The second thing to note is that the user base seems to be highly concentrated amongst retirees and left-leaning political users… which is fine, just caught me by surprise. As far as adoption, TechCrunch reported that Post had ~900K user visits in March 2023 (so unique active users is probably much lower than that).

Threads

There have been tons of recent articles (including this great one from WSJ’s Joanna Stern) about how Threads’ features compare to Twitter, but to drastically over-simplify: it’s another pure play Twitter clone. It also is being built on the same ActivityPub protocol as Mastodon (so they are planning to let users have that same freedom and portability). It came out about one week ago, and it has 100 million users. Hang on what the hell? Yes, 100 million. Alrighty then… now’s a good time to come back to the flamethrower analogy.

Flamethrowers and Silliness

Post and Mastodon started fires the old-fashioned way, by word-of-mouth and a short waitlist (in the case of Post). Bluesky has tried the new-age, desire-building way, making it exclusive and subjecting users to a long waitlist. Threads, on the other hand, used a flamethrower, allowing all Instagram users (2.4B of them!) to copy-over their follower/following lists as a starting point.

Like I said up front, I think Threads will make the other clones look silly. Here are a few reasons why:

1 - The Cold Start Problem. 

The first time you ever logged into Netflix, it probably asked you to pick a few genres, TV shows, or movies that you love. It did that because it knows very little about you until you actually start watching things. Early on, it runs the risk of ruining the magic and giving you bad recommendations about what to watch. That lack of data at the beginning is called a “cold start problem” in computer science. Almost everything you use that has a recommendation engine (news apps, streaming services, shopping sites, etc.) has that same hunger for data so it can make better recommendations. The same goes for social media apps. TikTok is highly engaging because it learns what you like, so you might see hours of breakdancing videos while I see hours of DIY log cabin building... For all the other Twitter clones trying to train their recommendation algorithms, it’s hard to build a feed that is engaging and customized per user, since they start with basically zero user data. Threads, on the other hand, already knows a lot about users based on Instagram and Facebook activity. It even lets you copy over your Instagram data and followers when you set-up a Threads account.

This advantage – knowing more about users – helps with every element of the platform: it recommends people you really should follow, it serves you more relevant ads, and it prioritizes content you’re likely to engage with. All of that makes the user experience better, so you’re more likely to use the app again and again.

2 - Momentum and Narrative.

Imagine you built a Twitter clone and after 1 year of fighting and iterating you reached 1 million monthly visits (cough, Post). Then, Mark Zuckerberg unleashes the power of Meta and hits 100x that number in a single week. I don’t need to spell-out who is winning the narrative battle… but it’s not you, my friend. And this battle for momentum has a real impact on users. Why? Because it’s no fun betting on the losing horse. In this case, I’m speaking from experience… Storytime:

Alongside the start of this newsletter, I started spending a few hours a week on Twitter, building an audience to drive awareness for the Substack. If you ask my fiancée, I was spending way more time than that, but I digress! After months of steady effort, I finally reached 500 Twitter followers. Then Substack launched its own Twitter clone (Notes), and Elon retaliated by limiting reach for any Twitter post that linked out to Substack. They even flagged the Substack links as spam… here’s one example from a Twitter user:

Overnight, that Twitter audience-building was way less valuable to me. Not cool man! So I explored the Twitter clones and tried each of them out… Which was a constant battle between focus and diversification… You can only maximize your impact by going “all in” on a single platform, but you don’t know which ones will win or work best. So instead, I ended up spending a little bit of time on all of them, trying to track and compare results. Ultimately, when I saw Post engagement declining, I stopped posting there. Same for Mastodon when I saw how annoying the user experience was for me, and I figured my friends/audience would feel the same way.I’m still stuck on the waitlist for Bluesky, so their small-ish user base has not been blessed with my posts at all!

What’s the point? For me, seeing the Threads announcement (and their early momentum) has been cause for celebration. I think they’ll be around at least as long as the other clones, and they have a huge, proven social media juggernaut backing them. Me (and many other content creators) will bet on that horse. Having content creators is key to making this work.

3 - Execution Trumps Ideas.

When I started my career, I used to have crazy business ideas and secret them away onto lists… never again to be remembered or discussed. But a few years ago, I heard an entrepreneur make a blunt comment that stuck with me. I forget the exact words, but it was something like “Ideas don’t matter. How you execute ideas matters.” And since then, I’ve started to hear entrepreneurs and business leaders say the same thing over and over again, in their own words. And to me it seems true. Steve Jobs didn’t invent the smartphone – he just made the best one anyone had ever seen. So along those lines, some of the criticism about Mark Zuckerberg “copying” ideas has rung less true for me over time. Critics point to his acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, Instagram’s copying of Snapchat’s stories, and then Instagram’s copying of TikTok’s reels – and call him dirty names. I think it’s more accurate to call him an executor. A proven one, at that. Love him or hate him, he builds strong, global businesses, especially when they are social media related.

Dust Settling and Wrap-up

If I’m right about Threads coming out on top, it seems like the micro-blogging ecosystem will probably be too micro to support multiple clones. So what might happen to Twitter, etc? One theory I have is that we might see them imitate the Fox vs. CNN political dynamic we have on cable. Twitter, which seemingly already has Tucker Carlson signed up for a show, could fill the spot on the right. Post could fill the spot on the left. They could both use the standard Twitter features (posting, following, etc.) to build community around commentators, politicians, and personalities. Then they could add features (long form live video, etc) that put it in an entirely new category – a cross between social network and traditional media.  I’m not convinced it’s a good thing if everyone retreats to their own confirmation bubbles, only consuming content they whole-heartedly agree with, but this prediction does seem plausible.

Regardless of who it is, I look forward to the next victor being crowned… I’m tired of wasting time on these losing horses.

Thank you for reading Forests Over Trees. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Bonus Bullets

Quote of the Week:

— Jack Dorsey, from a 2020 NYT Interview (while still Twitter CEO)

Quick News Reactions:

• Google & Meta saw your Tax filing — H&R Block and other tax companies sloppily let the tech firms see biographical info, salaries, etc. Not good.

• FTC lost another key battle — A US judge approved Microsoft’s Activision deal, overruling the FTC. But the bigger war to change minds around antitrust might be working, as described in a past article.

Podcast Recommendations:

• Ben Smith interview (1hr) — He’s been a writer and editor for Politico, BuzzFeed, and the NYT. Now he’s a founder at Semafor. Deep discussion with Kara Swisher about trends in media and news — you will learn a ton.

• Jeremy Giffon interview (1hr 40min) — He was a tech founder, and most recently a private equity partner at Tiny. Super interesting insights into investing, plus some great career advice.