Why does Threads gain 100 million users in 5 days while Twitter's other competitors cannot achieve that?

This article is from: CoinDesk

Original author: Emily Parker

Original Translation: Odaily, how is it?

According to CNBC's report, in less than 5 days, Threads, the new social media platform launched by Meta, has already gained over 100 million registered users, breaking the record of ChatGPT as the fastest-growing consumer application.

In recent years, Twitter has been facing challenges from new external social media platforms, including decentralized ones, but none of them have been able to succeed.

Last week, Twitter's new competitor emerged. Threads, launched by the traditional internet giant Meta, has already attracted over 100 million users.

When users face a new social media platform, there is a phenomenon where they prioritize network effects and simplicity of operation. Data privacy and freedom of speech are just icing on the cake.

First, let's make it clear: Threads may not necessarily beat Twitter. Although the former has shown good early market data performance, its future development depends on user stickiness. However, compared to Mastodon and Bluesky, Threads has at least attracted more attention in the early stages.

The early impact of Threads mainly comes from its integration with Instagram, fully utilizing the latter's 2 billion monthly active users. After the integration, Threads users can directly transfer their Instagram account information, providing a convenient user experience without stepping out of their comfort zone.

Threads' early success serves as a warning to social media startups and also reflects the potential challenges faced by established platforms like Instagram and Twitter. The competition in the social media landscape is fierce, and user preferences and trends can change rapidly.

Shoot the desire of mainstream acceptance of the encryption project itself, just like social media platforms, it can only establish economies of scale with more and more people participating.

Here are some experiences (lessons) for decentralized projects:

1. Choice of partners: Especially in the early stages of the project, choosing well-known partners can bring greater popularity to the project itself. This is also why people pay so much attention to institutional entry or Bitcoin ETFs. The Web 3 market needs to be noticed by more traffic owners in order to develop better.

2. Importance of low barriers and simple operations: Decentralized projects need to cater to the user habits of the mainstream market, and try to simplify the barriers and operations, which is conducive to Web 2 users entering more conveniently and can also be more easily regulated by centralized institutions and governments.

3. Don't focus too much on data privacy and decentralization: Most users do not care whether the project prioritizes user privacy, otherwise, Threads would not have reached 100 million user registrations within a week.