Front Burner - Will Threads be the Twitter killer?

Episode Date: July 11, 2023

After Twitter caused chaos by limiting how many Tweets users can see, the company behind Instagram and Facebook made a play for its audience last week. On Wednesday, Meta released Threads, an app also centered around short text posts. With its built in connection to Instagram accounts, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says Threads already has 100 million users. But Threads is already experiencing the same privacy concerns as other apps, and Twitter owner Elon Musk is threatening to sue over intellectual property. Today, Mashable reporter Matt Binder discusses whether it's possible for Threads to truly replace Twitter, and the good and bad of its audience fracturing across the internet. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Tamara Kandaker. So since Elon Musk took over Twitter in October, it feels like we've been watching the platform die a slow and painful death. Advertisers leaving, verification disappearing. Then, less than two weeks ago,

Musk made some changes that many people thought made the site even more unusable. Have y'all been getting this on your Twitter? Just trying to scroll through Twitter and what's this, man? Rate limit exceeded? Y'all, is this the end of Twitter? First, he forced people to log in to see tweets. And then he capped the amount of tweets users could see. And there was already a rush of new platforms like Mastodon and Blue Sky trying to take Twitter's place. But then on Wednesday, as Twitter was at its most vulnerable, social media's biggest player made its move. Big news today. We are launching Threads, an open and friendly public space for conversations. It takes the best parts of the Instagram experience and creates a whole new app around text, ideas, and sharing what's on your mind.

The morning after, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said 30 million users had already signed up to his new platform. Elon Musk threatened to sue Meta, alleging that Threads had used Twitter's intellectual property to develop the app. So could Threads be the Twitter killer? And what could it mean for our society if one of our biggest online conversations keeps getting fractured into separate apps? Today, I'm talking to a guy a lot of Twitter users will be familiar with. Matt Binder is a reporter with Mashable, and he's been testing out threads and Twitter's other competitors. Hi, Matt. Oh, hi. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks so much for being here. So I want to start with why Twitter is looking more vulnerable than ever, starting with the Friday before last when the platform suddenly changed who could see tweets.

Tell me about that change. Right, sure. So on Friday, June 30th, a lot of Twitter visitors, I should say here for this specific issue, noticed when they tried to go to twitter.com or open up a link to a tweet or a profile that they were immediately being hit with a login page. Now, Twitter does have around 250 million daily active users, but they also have hundreds of millions of people who visit the website who don't have an account. They're maybe sent a link. And so on Friday, it blocked those individuals who don't have Twitter accounts from being able to see anything at all. So Twitter is already locking out those hundreds of millions of users who visit the platform and aren't users. The following day, Elon Musk announces after a whole bunch of Twitter users, now this time people who do have accounts and are logged into the platform, started complaining that they were being rate limited. Basically, Twitter would let them know

via an error message that they would not feed them any more content. You would try to refresh the page and new tweets or replies to your own tweets wouldn't show up. Elon Musk announced that he was actually purposefully limiting that on Twitter and that Twitter users would only be able to view a certain number of tweets per day. He said, I think the first amount for non-paying users was something like 600 tweets per day. And for Twitter blue subscribers, people paying $8 a month for the platform,

they had something like 6,000 tweets per day. You might think that's a lot, even the 600 tweets, but you have to remember, Twitter has no way of knowing how many tweets you actually read. So this isn't like, oh, I read 600 tweets and now I can't read anymore. It's actually how many tweets Twitter serves you. can't read anymore. It's actually how many tweets Twitter serves you. So if you refresh the page and Twitter automatically shows you, you know, 30 tweets, you know, that's 30 tweets counts towards your allotment. It's not like, you know, you only read two, so it only counts two. And Elon did expand the number of tweets that you could see in a day. So what is it right now? So right now it is 10,000 tweets per day for paying Twitter users, Twitter blue subscribers, 1,000 per day for users who aren't paying.

And then it limits again for people who register completely new accounts right now. And they can only view 500 tweets per day. This is going to have a huge impact on the everyday user's experience with Twitter. You saw some people tweeting frustration yesterday, ironically tweeting frustration about Twitter, that they weren't able to get severe weather updates, critical news and information because they were being limited to the number of posts that they were able to view. Now, Elon Musk has not said how long he's going to implement this temporary crackdown. So how did Elon Musk explain why he was restricting views of tweets in this way? Okay, so Elon Musk claimed that the reason Twitter was restricting views to tweets was

because they were getting hit really hard by web scrapers and other manipulation. He was probably referring to like automated systems and bots. But the main thing he brought up was the web scrapers. And that's basically people using, again, it's usually automated systems, to go through Twitter's data, like, let's say a program that they are using would automatically open Twitter, scrape all the data in terms of all the tweets that would load up. Maybe the system would be set up to go to individual's profile. Maybe if they have an email address there, grab their email address. And it could sound nefarious, but it's not always nefarious. People use web scrapers in an

educational setting many times to study data. And the interesting thing here is that Twitter once provided an official means to get this data that Twitter could monitor and properly set up so it was utilized's a way for developers to connect their apps or their own code to an existing platform. But then when Elon Musk came along, he decided that Twitter's very generous free API offerings didn't make sense for his business plan for Twitter and set up paid tiers. Yeah, I read that initially it was $42,000, which is a lot of money for small developers and founders, right? I wonder though, do you buy Elon's explanation? Because I know there's also been speculation that this is him trying to cut costs because he hasn't been paying Twitter's bills. And I wonder if you can tell me a bit about the financial issues that Twitter is

facing right now. So, you know, I think the API thing was partially like every feature on Twitter right now is viewed from the standpoint of how can I monetize this? Twitter lost advertisers, a lot of advertisers, roughly 50% of their biggest advertisers left the platform when Elon Musk acquired it and officially took over. And that's because of how he wants to run it in terms of less moderation, less safe space for brands to be able to post their adverts. So a lot of them left the platform and the ones that stayed ended up pulling back their monthly spend on Twitter, too. So even the ones that were still spending money at Twitter were spending a lot less. And given the rate limit, whoever is left advertising on Twitter, now their reach is also more limited, right?

Right. Yeah, that's a great point. You know, on top of the existing Twitter issues, Twitter Blue subscriptions never really took off. The company launched Twitter Blue in November and it's July and they still have yet to reach 1 million subs. Yeah, no one I know has signed up for Twitter Blue. Right, on the flip side, Snapchat, they launched their premium sort of subscription service, which gave users extra features shortly before Twitter Blue.

And they reached like a million subscribers within like a few months. And now I believe they're approaching maybe even three million subscribers. They just took off. So Twitter is kind of flailing right now. for Twitter like Mastodon, Blue Sky, Hive Social, and then Meta, which is the company behind Facebook and Instagram, launched its attempt to be Twitter's successor. That platform is called Threads and it really exploded over the weekend. At least 10 million people signed up for Threads in just the first seven hours of launching. Users will be able to post up to 500 characters of text and five minutes of video and pictures. Why do you think Threads might have a leg up on the other attempts to get a mainstream audience? Sure. So, I mean, Threads has meta backing it. So that right off the bat puts it

in a position that none of those other Twitter alternative platforms ever had. Like there's some that have a few million dollars in funding. Threads has the billion-dollar giant in meta behind it and all of its infrastructure that it already has built for Facebook and WhatsApp and Instagram. For the latter, when it comes to Instagram, Threads is directly built to be connected to Instagram. So when an Instagram user wants to join Threads, they're able to just automatically import their bio and their links and all that. When their followers join Threads,

they're already told, hey, follow all your Instagram follows in one click. Based on how quickly it took some of these big Instagram users to build the following on threads. It seems like the vast majority of people going from Instagram to threads are just in one click following everyone on both platforms. Yeah. I believe they announced July 10th that they reached 100 million users. That's in five days. I mean, sure, you could put an asterisk next to it because of that connection to Instagram. But with that asterisk, they still

have 100 million users. So Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on Threads that he thinks the toxicity of Twitter is what kept the site from being successful and that he wants to keep Threads friendly as it keeps growing. And I know you've already been using it, but for people who haven't tried it, tell us what your experience has been like. When you're scrolling through threads, what are you seeing and who's on the platform? So it's pretty clear that threads was sort of rushed out. It works, but it's very bare bones when it comes to features. Originally, the word that was going around weeks earlier was that Meta was looking to launch this

mid-July at the earliest. So I do think they saw the opportunity, especially with what just happened that first weekend of July with the rate limiting and the locking out. And they just saw that as an opportunity to, you know, we need to get this out now because that's a huge mistake Twitter is making. So there's no sort of feed where you can only see the people you follow, which means the main feed and only feed is a feed of whatever Threads' algorithm thinks you want to see. It's missing, you know, there's no direct message feature, a private messaging feature. I mean, these are all problems that seem to be temporary and that Threads will address. But in terms of the quality of the conversation and the content, I've also been on Threads.

I've been going on it every day just to sort of check it out. And I've been finding it a little bit boring. I don't know if you feel the same way, but I think it's because the people I was following on Instagram, who I'm now following on threads, I wasn't really following them because they had interesting things to say the way that I follow people on Twitter. It's mostly friends and brands and influencer accounts, meme accounts. obviously friends and brands and influencer accounts, meme accounts. And it kind of highlights how Instagram and Twitter are very different platforms, right? Absolutely. That is absolutely essential to this. And it's going to be really important for threads to figure this out. So Instagram influencers are great at building their following based on the

photos they post. Doesn't necessarily mean they have a lot of interesting things to say when it comes to text-based content. And a lot of people were complaining that their feeds were filled those first few days with Instagram influencers and corporate brand accounts just posting real nonsensical stuff, like asking real boring questions like, hey, what's your favorite color? And that's not the stuff that hits on Twitter. People go to Twitter for, you know, interesting takes, breaking news, funny tweets that are like, you know,

content that you can't see anywhere else. I mean, from what I've heard from people who have been able to follow enough people where I guess it's the algorithm is getting the point and they are seeing some content that interests them. I've heard from people that they are enjoying it more than Twitter because they're not seeing the negative stuff that just gets forced into your feed on Twitter. So it seems though like Threads is already having some regulatory issues, right? Why isn't the app out in Europe yet? Europe has a very strong regulatory body for tech that

basically the rest of the world have not been able to keep up with. In Threads case, they were able to just say, we're just not going to launch there. You know, Threads collects a lot of data. Same data, though, that Instagram and Facebook collects. But Facebook and Instagram are facing all sorts of issues in the EU, including fines. If you run afoul of some of those EU tech regulations, the fines can be as much as a percentage of a company's entire turnover globally. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem.

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access to their work phones or electronic devices. They still had access to internal Twitter documents. They still had access to proprietary Twitter information. I think it's a stretch for Twitter. Meta has already come out and denied any allegation. They claim they've hired former Twitter employees, but that none of them have worked on threads. It feels worth mentioning that Elon had tweeted after laying off a bunch of workers that he was sure that their talents would be appreciated elsewhere.

And now he's mad that some of them have gone to work for Meta. Right. I mean, it's a sort of a ridiculous sort of thing for anyone to say. The idea that they wouldn't get hired by another social media company. They can't just never work in their field ever again after Twitter laid them off. I mean, if you use Threads, you can obviously tell that it has the basic functionalities that any of these sort of apps or platforms in Twitter's industry would have. All social media platforms have the ability to post, share, like. But if you use threads beyond those basic required

features of a platform of that nature, it feels and looks and acts very different from Twitter. So unless Twitter has some sort of proof that this went on, I think they will have a very hard time going any further with their legal threat. Do you think threads might face regulatory problems in the US? Because I mean, there's already been calls for antitrust action to break up Instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp for a long time. And having Instagram does give them a competitive advantage here. Do you think that could be an issue for threads? I don't think so. I don't think threads will cause any sort of monopoly issues for meta. I mean, I know that other platforms of theirs have, but threads is so integrated with Instagram and it really does serve the same purpose, just with a different type of content.

There isn't that sort of monopolization in the real time micro blogging, if that's what Twitter space is, that there is in other social media spaces. There are lots of Twitter alternatives. None have yet to really compete with Twitter, but they have found niche communities which have moved to those platforms. You might not be hearing much about Spill or Blue Sky or Mastodon in the mainstream anymore, or yet. or Mastodon in the mainstream anymore, or yet. They very much do have sort of bustling niche communities that do use the platform on a regular basis. And that's sort of what I think is going to happen in general with this whole space. Twitter never was the giant that TikTok was in

the short form space, YouTube was in the long form space. Facebook was in the friends and family space. Twitter never was as big as any of those companies. Now they are facing real competition for the first time from many different platforms. And because of what Elon Musk has sort of fomented there, I think what will end up happening is Twitter won't die like a quick death, like people think. Is it possible that, you know, they have to sell off because Elon Musk can't find a business model and his investors force him to, you know, at least recuperate some of their funds? I can picture that happening. But Twitter has been around for too long and has too much data for it to just

die off. So what I will, I do think will happen is that Twitter could possibly no longer become the default text-based real-time messaging, public messaging app. What we might see is that different communities find that one of these platforms suits their particular community better. Already you see a lot of artists and left-leaning political figures on Blue Sky. You see a lot of programmers, like tech programmers, engineers, and academics on Mastodon. Threads, like we were just talking about, has that Instagram influencer. Celebrities, like entertainment celebrities using it so it's possible that you know these different communities that formerly use twitter leave for one of these other alternative platforms

and twitter finds itself no longer that default in that space and they too just end up becoming a niche platform for whomever ends up staying on Twitter. I mean, that would actually be, in my opinion, one of the better case scenarios for Twitter than it just continuing to peter out and then eventually go the way of MySpace, for example. I do wonder, though, if it's possible for anyone to become the new Twitter, to be that unified space for conversation that Twitter was before Elon Musk took over. Do you think it is, or is that era over? Yeah, I don't know.

Twitter did attempt to become that sort of global public square for everyone to talk about everything. In a lot of ways, that sounds like a real killer idea. Wow, to be able to take part in a community so large would truly be sort of this amazing thing. And I think Twitter was able to sort of do that. But once it got too big, when too many people joined in, it quickly became clear

that one group of people is not going to like another group of people. And for people to just freely be able to spread that negative content against users on the platform, on that same platform, I think it sort of spiraled in a way where people were turned off from Twitter. And they were like, yeah, this is not, it's much safer for me to be at one of these more sequestered platforms. You don't always want to talk to everyone about everything. That's one of the reasons why though, I think Twitter is so good at breaking news and current events, because that is sort of like a thing where everyone wants to talk about it and have an opinion on it. And that might be the one area where Twitter continues to have that

stranglehold on that other platforms won't. But it's also funny enough, the one industry that Elon Musk seems to be most hostile to, he does not like journalists and reporters. It'll be a funny dynamic if it does go this route and all these other sort of niche communities on Twitter find a platform somewhere else. And it's just that hardcore news and media. It'll be very interesting to see how he threads that needle, working with those users who he most despises, but also most needs because they're the one user base that still has that relationship with Twitter. Okay, Matt, thank you so much. I'm really interested to see how this is all going to unfold. I appreciate your insight. Thanks for doing this. Oh, no, my pleasure.

Thanks for having me. So before we go today, last week we did a show about the tough situation facing Canadian media and how two of Canada's biggest newspaper publishers were in talks of merging. That's the conglomerate behind the National Post called Post Media and the majority owner of the Toronto Star called Nordstar. Well, yesterday we found out that those talks have fallen apart. A statement from Torstar said that, quote, the added backdrop of regulatory and financial uncertainty led them to make the decision to end their negotiations. As with newspapers across the country, both publishers have been saddled with debt

that's only getting more expensive as interest rates go up. We'll keep you updated, but that's all for today. I'm Tamara Kandaker. Thank you so much for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.