Meta's Threads users looking for 'genuine connection' as Twitter-like social media platform goes back to basics
Meta's Threads users looking for 'genuine connection' as Twitter-like social media platform goes back to basics
Early adopters of Meta's text-based app Threads say the platform is a fresh start for people exhausted by a never-ending stream of "stuff" on social media.
Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, launched the Twitter-like platform in 100 countries last week.
Threads has done away with many of the features and content considered staples for most modern social media platforms.
Meta's rival to Twitter has no hashtags, no search and no direct messaging, at least for now.
Backpacker and entrepreneur Ron Lim said the app's simplicity was refreshing.
"People were just posting whatever thoughts they were thinking of and responding to people they don't know," he said of his early experiences.
Mr Lim, a microblogger and author who documents his travels around the world, was an early adopter of the new social media platform and gained more than 50,000 followers in the first four days of the app's launch.
He was holidaying in Western Australia when he joined the app early Thursday morning, and was dubbed the "Threads guru" by users as the first few hours unfolded.
Mr Lim has more than 700,000 followers on Instagram but said the majority of his Threads audience was not from that platform.
"I was very curious about what the Threads app would be like, and I had a lot of thoughts about my experience on it, so I started posting those thoughts," he said.
"And people started responding to these thoughts that I had and I would have a conversation about it with them in the comments."
Users want 'genuine connection'
Threads allows new users to transfer their followers from Instagram with a single button click, reducing the learning curve and making it easier for them to reconnect with friends and accounts they like.
But many are opting to ignore that feature entirely.
"I have seen many people talk about wanting a fresh start," Mr Lim said.
"The interesting thing about Threads is that people on there seem a lot more eager to want to chat and get to know new people."
Images, videos, influencers and brands are all allowed on the platform.
But a sub-culture has emerged that has chosen to reject this kind of content in favour of posts from "real, genuine" people.
"It feels very similar to when I was using Twitter in 2009, back when people were less cautious about what they were saying and were a lot more open to talking to people they don't know," Mr Lim said.
Future of social media
Digital culture expert Nicholas Carah, an associate professor and director of Digital Cultures and Societies at the University of Queensland, said there was a great tension emerging within social media.
"One story of social media, one kind of idealistic narrative about it, is that this would be this place where people could hang out and chat," he told ABC Radio Brisbane's Afternoons presenter Katherine Feeney.
"Everyone would get to express themselves and form the little communities of people who are like them, talking about the things they wanted to talk about."
Dr Carah said the "dream" of social media was to get most people talking, unlike television, newspapers and radio which had few people talking and most people listening.
But social media had over time begun to look more like the kinds of mass media it was designed to be different to.
"A whole class of content creators move in and become very skilled at making content," he said.
"That's why we're seeing this kind of pact form between the platforms and professional content creators, because they bring the audiences that can then be on-sold to advertisers.
Dr Carah said in the case of Threads, audiences were caught up in a commercial battle between billionaires.
"In the Meta logic, every minute that we spend scrolling in the Twitter feed is a minute we could spend scrolling in one of their feeds and feeding their ad model," he said.
"For many of us it's like, where's the place to hang out, where I can express myself and chat to the people I want to chat to and find out the stuff I want to find out about."
The social media 'death spiral'
Threads could be the dawn of a new era of social media, but Dr Carah said it could also be a sign of decline.
"It's a bit like the 1950s when car companies like Chevy and Buick and whatever would just make bigger and bigger cars with bigger tail fins and bigger seats and bigger this and bigger that," he said.
"That feels like what Meta's doing; they just keep bolting new features on."
But Dr Carah said people would eventually get sick of bigger, more complicated things and would opt for platforms that were simpler.
"I wonder if we're sort of reaching the end of this first generation of social media," he said.
"And maybe there's a disruptor on the horizon that we don't even know about just yet."
abc.net.au
