From Twitter to Threads. Everything dies
We all know the recent history of Twitter; the scams, the scumbags and the crowded advert-filled experience that has week by week become less positive. Some say that Elon Musk has ruined it because he is crazy and others because he is right-wing, but perhaps he is just not very good at running a huge social network.
Threads appeared in the last 24 hours and brought with it something very different to the others that have tried to take over from Twitter.
As a Zuckerberg product, you have to sell your life to experience the platform, but I figured that since I was already on Instagram my soul had been bargained off some time ago. I decided to give it a try with the expectation to drop it a few hours later.
I ended up dropping Twitter to the second home screen on my iPhone and moving Threads to one of the treasured front screen positions.
It feels fresh, positive and energetic.
Not because of the design, although this is admittedly very clean, but because the scammers and scumbags haven't arrived in big numbers yet. The grifters will come, but I am hoping that we will have the tools to keep them away. Then again, Instagram and Facebook are hardly good at this are they?
What has surprised me is the huge volume of big names and small names that I know who flocked to Threads so quickly. It's like we were all waiting for something that did not need special servers or too much effort to build a group of people to interact with, and Threads appears to have filled that niche.
The main surprise was opening Twitter after a few hours of Threads and realising how dated it felt. Something changed today and, worryingly, it could be that Zuckerberg will have even more influence than before. Perhaps, however, he is better than Musk after all...