I still remember the day I joined Twitter. Fifteen years ago, just a month into my journalism school and by the end of our online journalism module, most of us students had signed up for a Twitter account. It was a cool thing to do. I felt like the coolest kid in the class for being able to grab a Twitter handle with my first name while a number of my classmates struggled to find a handle.
Fifteen years later, Threads, the newest social media platform from Meta, has brought a sense of deja vu. Threads feels like the early days of Twitter. There are no rules, the guidance is vague, and there are a bunch of very enthusiastic users trying to make sense of the platform.But it differs from Threads in one important way: Early Twitter was also...kind of lonely. When I joined, I followed a bunch of people and no one seemed to follow me back.
Threads feels a lot more vibrant. If you are an avid Instagram user then you have a network already. You know your followers, you know what they post, and you have a good starting point. Threads lets you bring this community along, like a support group. There are signs of strong initial interest more generally. The app, as of Friday morning, hit 30 million signups in its first day. Whether people stick around remains to be seen.as my colleague Hasan Chowdhury notes
, as the site has done a few unpopular things like rate-limit users, start charging for its API, and charge for verification. Like a lot of others on Threads right now, the new app harks bark to brighter days of early Twitter — hopefully the calm doesn't turn into chaos.Subscribe to push notifications