I truly hate to say it, but Meta is crushing it with Threads. I have avoided it until now, disinterested in investing any more of my attention and data in Meta products, and annoyed by them injecting Threads posts in my Instagram feed. But having tried most of the Twitter alternatives, Threads instantly set itself apart in the immediate experience.

Search for the next Twitter

When Elon Musk bought Twitter and immediately embarked upon the most heinous restructuring I’ve ever seen, I went looking for alternatives.

For me, Twitter was an outlet for my random thoughts and ideas. Twitter was never perfect, or even that good. It was a cutthroat space, where any misstep could lead to massive pile ons. It was also hard to get past the initial stage of “posting into the void”. Also, it was almost completely disjoint from my real world social network. But if you wanted to know what was happening and what the most plugged in people were thinking, there was no other place to be.

I still use X occasionally, but I try to limit it to occasions when I have a very specific purpose for posting there. People pay for reach by buying blue checks and that makes the quality of discussions generally crappy. It’s even more combative than it used to be. I truly don’t understand why people still go there to chit chat and why brands and public figures haven’t completely abandoned the place yet.

Facebook is almost as dismal as X. I have long since stopped posting regularly. One of the most compelling things about today’s Facebook is how it resurfaces up as “memories” great posts I made there a decade ago. These days, Facebook is for announcements, not open discussion. I keep up with people via Instagram stories.

Especially when I was on the job search, I posted to LinkedIn heavily. It gets a lot of hate, but I like it a lot. But it’s fundamentally a professional network and just not the place for a lot of the things I want to discuss.

Then there are the true Twitter clones. I’ve spent a lot of time on Mastodon and Bluesky, and both of them have been good enough to make me not miss Twitter.

When Biden withdrew from the Presidential race, I decided it was finally time to see what Threads is like. I wanted to know how a monumental news event played out in different spaces. I was surprised.

Threads does it better

Unlike Bluesky and Mastodon, it feels like regular people are on Threads. It’s not just the terminally online. It doesn’t feel like a clique, with one clear inner circle and thread of discussion. People are talking about all topics.

Secondly, Threads immediately connects you to your Instagram network, which bridges my social and parasocial worlds in a way that actually feels normal. At least, so far. But when I post, I’m cognizant that my actual social connections might see what I’m saying. Instagram does this to an extent, but I’m much less likely to see my friends’ comments on posts. This is important to me, because one of my goals in posting is to share my thoughts with and influence people I know. It brings back an element of the Facebook golden age.

Lastly, I have found that I’m immediately getting more engagement with my posts and replies. I don’t know why this is. I suspect Threads is better at forwarding posts to people most likely to interact. Meta is already very effective at this with Instagram’s comments. But on the other networks, even my best posts are lucky to get a couple interactions. I don’t want to be famous or have a huge following. But I do like interacting with people. That’s the whole point!

I actively don’t want Threads to succeed. I don’t trust Meta with my data or their intentions. But for the first time in many years, they actually created a compelling social network on their own. And I think it’s something I’m going to find useful, despite my reservations.