Social networks live on network effects. You don't choose a social network, you just go where everyone else is.
The one difference is that threads basically uses instagrams engagement model and bubble up stuff you 'like' or would 'agree with' rather than very confrontational stuff. It's still politics. Just your own view of it.
See also: "we won’t proactively recommend content about politics on recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads" https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/continuing-ou...
I won't be surprised if thread userbase grow over twitter user base in the next year, but their ad revenues will still lag behind as a North american or EU user is "worth" more (a lot more if from the US) for advertisers.
name tfic% pop pop% B/D
Taiwan 0.1056 23112793 0.0028 37.61x
Japan 0.0822 123103479 0.0150 5.50x
Vietnam 0.0413 101598527 0.0123 3.35x
USA 0.0367 347275807 0.0422 0.87x
Brazil 0.0229 212812405 0.0259 0.89x
Others 0.7112 7423710059 0.9019 0.79x
(total) 0.9999 8231613070 1.0000 1.00x
I'm guessing that the moral of the story is, social media cannot be multilingual/multinational. Either one culture dominates, or the system don't work.
1: https://www.similarweb.com/website/threads.net/#geography
edit: edited to add column C, D, E from [2]; Column E, B/D, is traffic divided by population count as share of world's, which I think should indicate how much differences in popularity there is.
2: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by...
It's a pattern that you'll notice after a while. US uses Messenger, EU uses WhatsApp, Japan uses LINE, and Korea uses KakaoTalk. Twitter is still like 30% American and 20% Japanese, Facebook is 30% Indian and 20% American, etc. Functional differences between those competing services are trivial, so there shouldn't be reasons any of those apps cannot dominate the world completely in each field and be multilingual and massively multi-national, yet that just don't happen somehow.
I can't remember having seen any engagement on twitter/X in years. And that's with thousands of alleged "followers"
I used to participate in some subreddits where support is offered for a couple of chronic illnesses I have but even those are "doctor says it's X, am I cooked".
Just over it.
I never intend to go to Threads, but am tricked at least once a week by different confusing links in Instagram to going there.
I read a lot of different news and social sites and can't remember ever seeing a link to threads.
Just checked and Threads in Android play store is 15th in the top downloaded charts (free apps, all categories, UK location).
X is 123rd in the charts
So guessing Meta is putting their existing userbase under strong pressure to install Threads?
Mobile's for phone calls, right? And a mobile phone has a tiny screen, is short on electrical power, and has the worst substitute for a keyboard back before the first typewriter!!!
Instead, I type this using an excellent 32" screen and a really good keyboard got years ago with a Gateway computer!!!
A joke, folks!
For example, here is author John Green's threads account viewed through mastodon.social: https://mastodon.social/@johngreenwritesbooks@threads.net
- Threads users have to individually opt-in to seeing Fediverse content
- Threads keeps Fediverse content in a separate feed and section of the replies
- Many Fediverse servers do not federate with Threads
- Threads and Mastodon users can search for each other
- Threads and Mastodon users can boost/like each other's posts
- Threads and Mastodon users can reply to each other's posts, but I don't think replying to replies works yet
Corrections welcome. I could have some details wrong.
I view this as something that Meta would turn off in a heartbeat if they gained a dominant position in the market, but I also think that a possible end-state for microblogging is Threads + Bluesky + Twitter + Truth Social + WordPress + Tumblr + Flipboard + various independent Mastodon and other Fediverse instances all federating with each other.
And I appreciate that so far Meta has put in the work towards seeing how that would work.
https://about.fb.com/news/2025/06/its-now-easier-see-more-fe...
https://about.fb.com/news/2024/06/what-is-the-fediverse/
https://www.engadget.com/threads-can-now-show-replies-from-m...
MilnerRoute•7mo ago