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Analysis
It’s now been a week since Meta’s Threads took off, and the app hit over 100 million users. Twitter traffic is reportedly down due to the shiny new toy that is Threads. But, after trying it out, I don’t think it’s going to immediately replace Twitter. Right now, it’s still in its infancy stage, and part of that stage is copying viral tweets and posting them on Threads.
People have copied both their own and other people’s tweets for content on Threads. The king of Weird Twitter, Dril, replied to a thread that copied the format of one of his hit tweets with the comment, “FUNNY !!!!!!!”
“Saw somebody copying one of my more popular tweets for threads and that’s okay but i am that girl let’s be clear,” Twitter user @mitchoo_oo wrote.
“Ok I’d rather die on twitter than live on threads,” @LucyXIV wrote, along with screenshots of four normie memes found on Threads.
“Bro threads is so boring it’s literally old recycled tweets from twitter,” another user wrote.
It’s true: Threads kind of feels like Facebook (which is not a surprise because it’s the same parent company). And Facebook is full of posts that are just screenshots or copy-and-pasted viral tweets and memes. Many brands are also posting the same information on both Twitter and Threads, making it feel redundant to scroll through both your Twitter and Threads feeds.
After several days on Threads, I find myself using Twitter more frequently. Threads hasn’t had enough time to develop its own identity. For now, it’s simply mimicking other existing apps.
Why it matters
As I’ve discussed in previous columns, people have been talking about leaving Twitter for a while. But now that there are multiple alternative apps up, users are slow to fully migrate to another platform. That makes sense; people don’t want to leave an app if the people they are following are still on it. Twitter isn’t dead (yet).