Instagram Threads lures creators, and Meta’s challenge is to keep them

Brian Moller is a self-proclaimed “thread guru”.

The radio personality and comedian, whose stage name is B Mo PrinceBeen bantering and joking with other early adopters of the Twitter clone. In the past week, he had a few wisecracks about his new creation. thread enforcement priority over certain necessities such as sleep.

Over the past few years, Moeller has built a wide-ranging presence on social media sites such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube as a creator of short comedy films that poke fun at Gen Z and millennials and how they see each other. He now has around 3 million followers on social media and online video platforms.

He missed one major app: Twitter.

“The vibe was bad,” Moeller said of the response to his Twitter jokes and posts about the comedy skit. “It’s not really a platform.”

Instagram power users like Moller are a big reason Threads topped the download charts and became one of the fastest-growing consumer apps ever, breaking 100 million users in its first week of launch. Twitter is bogged down by technical glitches and Elon Musk’s erratic behavior has turned off many former loyalists, Yuan CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped at the opportunity, kicking the competition while it struggled.

The hard part is retaining users.

The surge in posts is largely due to the ease with which existing Instagram users can create accounts on the new messaging service and connect with their established followers. But the app is already showing signs of weakening, with online analytics firms Sensor Tower and Sametimeweb reporting a drop in engagement.

Moeller is exploring how Threads could become a core service of his online presence and a potential way to reach a wider audience. He hopes Threads will have staying power and that people will continue to open the app throughout the day to listen to his jokes and other forms of entertainment.

Earlier this week, Meta rolled out its first major update to Threads, adding the ability to see followers more easily and a translate button so users can read text in other languages.

Caspar Lee, whose YouTube channel has more than 6.6 million subscribers, said that despite that, Threads lacked key enhancements to help creators reach an audience on the app beyond their existing Instagram followers. There isn’t even a website that users can access from their desktop.

“Threads was the very nice new guy in the class and everyone wanted to talk to him,” Lee said. He also owns a venture capital firm and is the co-founder of marketing firm Influencer. “And then over the next few weeks, they have to figure out if there’s anything else to do.”

Currently, Threads users cannot search for threads or hashtags that represent trending topics. The feed is algorithmic based on who the user follows and what Instagram recommends. There is a sense of randomness and disorganized chaos. You are not really participating in the conversation.

“This is a big thing on Twitter, TikTok and YouTube, you can jump on a topic, a trend, you can get a huge number of people following you and consuming your content,” Lee said. “It will be interesting to see if people can go from an initial boost in the first few days to a sustained increase over the next few months.”

Instagram execs have started Position Threads as a friendlier alternative to Twitter, blocking discussions about news and politics and focusing more on entertainment and lifestyle content. Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram explain Threads caters to people who are interested in topics like fashion, sports, music and beauty but never found a like-minded community on Twitter.

Conflict is a big draw of Twitter, which is often used by prominent politicians to promote their own views and attack those of their rivals.

Lee even created a popular YouTube video Five years ago, he read “Mean Tweets” with comedian Jack Whitehall. This video has been viewed more than 1 million times.

Moller said he found Threads to be more popular than Twitter, and liked being able to scroll through and post without having to engage in real-time arguments. One of the few things he does on Twitter is read about sports. Even so, comments can be “so argumentative” that they are offensive, he said, adding that the combative nature of the discussions has only grown since Musk bought the company late last year.

Thread, at least so far, “doesn’t have the same vitriol,” he said.

Marcel Floruss, a fashion influencer with over 580,000 Instagram followers and over 1 million followers youtube subscriberMeta said it was a “smart move” in trying to appeal to disappointed Twitter users as well as those who had given up on the app.

However, he’s still trying to understand how Threads can help him. Florus has built an influential career offering fashion advice and tips, but he never found a way to “deliver any value on Twitter,” which he says is more about news, live events and politics.

On Stories, Instagram’s ephemeral messaging service (similar to Snapchat), Floruss shares photos and tips. He also creates content for TikTok, Reels, Snapchat and YouTube. Floruss said he’ll “try” Threads, but he’s not ready to make it a priority, given how much of his time he spends elsewhere.

“I felt like the amount of work I needed to put in outweighed the potential benefits,” he said.

Florus isn’t alone in taking a wait-and-see approach.

Chas Lacaillade, CEO, Influencer Talent Agency bottle rocket managementsaid many of his creator clients held off on Threads until the app showed it could be a place to advance their careers.

“They don’t want to go from 0 to 100 miles on this thing,” Lacayade said. “It’s important not to discredit what you’re getting by looking for something that’s unproven or trending this month.”

Lacayade said creators would rather spend their time deepening existing relationships than developing new social media services that could quickly lose momentum.

Lacayade said Threads “has a really compelling entrance.” The real test will be Meta’s ability to find sustained momentum, he said.

As it stands, there is no way for creators to monetize their presence on Threads. There are no ads, so brands aren’t looking for influencer partners, he said, and it’s unclear whether Threads could be a channel that helps them direct people to sites where they can sell merchandise or promote their Patreon pages.

A Meta spokesperson said in an email that the company’s priority “is building consumer value first” in order to “explore how to build commercial value in a way that doesn’t compromise the consumer experience.”

The spokesperson also pointed to Mosseri’s previous public remarks statement Describes that Instagram “has been completely focused on keeping things up and fixing bugs, but we’re starting to prioritize features that are clearly missing, like the follow feed, edit button, and post search.”

Creators say YouTube remains the No. 1 channel for influencers to build lasting careers.

“Is there any platform other than YouTube that can keep you or any audience interested for more than 30 seconds?” Florus said. “You get people’s attention, which is worth a lot to advertisers.”

when twitter was in trouble For advertisers, the site is trying to gain relevance among creators. The company recently started paying some verified users when they place ads in their conversations. Tameka Bazile, who works in artist relations and marketing at Time magazine, said that might draw some people to Twitter instead of Threads.