How Twitter Survives (Or Doesn't)
Meta's approach, Twitter's moat and a few different future scenarios
Meta launched Threads and it reached 100M users in five days—the fastest growing app ever.1 This growth pits it squarely against Twitter in a heads-up contest and we likely won’t have to wait long to see the resolution. Meta’s advantages are clear and their path is predictable. What Twitter might be able to do to defend this advance is less clear, but their moat is unique.
I. Meta’s approach
People often accuse Meta of being unable to innovate (and those same accusations exist today with respect to Threads). Yet people rarely laud Meta for their ability to iterate—and this, beyond anything, is Meta’s core competency. Meta excels at applying data rigorously to their product process. They’ve built internal tools to run highly complex tests that can tell them clearly how different features move different metrics, impact performance and more. They employ data scientists across all of their teams to analyze and parse these results. The upshot of all of this is that Meta can advance their products steadily and with confidence.2
This approach depends on an existing foundation of millions of users, which is its Achilles’ heal. Meta built a culture around data-driven product development, which has the side-effect of devaluing deep intuitive product sense—the type of product sense you often see in startup founders. Consequently, Meta struggles to imagine new products into existence.
This has always been the hurdle Meta has failed to leap and one of the reasons that all of the apps on the masthead (the family of apps) are acquisitions. Having the confidence to pour resources into a product vision just isn’t Meta’s MO, but it is the necessary step to build a large enough base of users for their iterative approach to kick in. At the same time it’s also the reason Instagram and Whatsapp flourished post-acquisition—they had that userbase.
This time though Meta banished their bogeyman. Their app execution and go-to-market so far has been flawless. So you can bet dollars to donuts that over the coming weeks you’ll see a steady stream of features. The ship speed will far outstrip Twitter; the features will be stable; and they will increase engagement. I know this because Meta knows it. You wouldn’t be seeing these features otherwise.
II. Twitter’s je ne sais quoi
Meanwhile, Twitter seems to possess whatever the opposite of operational excellence is. They barely ship and when they do the ideas are half baked. They don’t seem to have any process for validating assumptions and often it appears that even though they invalidate those beliefs publicly, they stick with them anyway out of sheer stubbornness (or something else?).
Even so, Twitter is a unique corner of the Internet. People often describe it disparagingly (“hellscape”, “abyss”). They’re usually describing it that way on Twitter. And while there are horrible and abusive trolls on twitter, I don’t think that’s typically what these people are commenting on. Instead, it’s the undertone of the whole platform, which I would describe as cynical, yet incisive; darkly funny with a strange depth of truth that’s hard to describe. There is something about this mix that, although not attractive or even palatable to most, is indispensable and irreplaceable to others. And it has proven to be rather resilient in the face of competition. Here’s an example:
There’s so much truth and humor packed in. And while it’s cutting, it’s not mean. There’s a high bar for intelligence (all three tweets in the above example are smart) and a higher bar for insight and wit. People come to Twitter with curiosity. It’s unclear to me at the moment if this is something the runners of Threads have internalized.
This is also where Threads has stated publicly that they don’t want to go. And probably for good reason. The transgressive nature of Twitter is self-limiting and so far has not be particularly conducive to advertising. Threads wants to keep it “positive” and believe there’s room in the market not only for something of equal size, but actually much larger. The future will not only turn on whether Meta is correct, but also how quickly they’re able to pivot if they’re not. Here are three potential scenarios:
III. Scenario 1: Threads dominates
As stated above, Meta moves forward with precision. Their ship velocity is high and we see continued strong engagement numbers. The Threads feed improves quickly, pushing off the dock from Instagram influencers and capturing people who have a penchant for pithy text. You start to see reluctant Twitter accounts get pulled in. This will be a leading indicator of Twitter’s ultimate demise. Eventually it hits a tipping point which kicks off a death spiral for Twitter. Engagement metrics for top accounts continue to drop on Twitter and rise on Threads past the point of no return.
It’s unclear in this scenario what remains of Twitter. No matter what though, it’s just a husk of its former self. Elon has the capital to keep it afloat for basically as long as he wants (and as long as his ego will bear). The right wing accounts and Elon stans probably stick around and the discourse gets even more toxic. The whole things devolves into an even smaller Elon digital fiefdom and an elephant graveyard of some of the best takes on the internet (unless Elon deletes them out of spite).
IV. Scenario 2: Threads crashes back down to earth
And the crash would be spectacular (as noted by Nikita Bier on Twitter). It probably starts because Threads refuses to cater to the Twitter tone while being wrong about the market for positive vibes. The feed resembles early Twitter and Facebook (“I just made a sandwich”) and stagnates.
It turns out that bootstrapping on top of a group of people that have already self-selected away from a text-based network doesn’t work. Numbers begin to drop as Instagram influencers drift back to Instagram and Twitter folks who came in hope of something refreshing and new skulk back to Twitter. This kicks off a death spiral for Threads. The feed continues to deteriorate and people continue to leave for better feeds of pictures and videos on Instagram. Despite a high ship velocity, Threads can’t stay afloat. As daily active user numbers level off in the low tens of millions, Meta shutters Threads.
V. Scenario 3: Coexistence
Meta is right that there’s a big audience for Threads and they create a much larger, much more boring version of Twitter for normies. Despite a much larger platform, they fail to pull over the core Twitter users. Meanwhile Twitter retains its audience. With more choices in the market, the cap on twitter growth/daily active users is even tighter than it is today. Twitter continues to wallow in mediocrity and so does Threads, but for different reasons.
V. Predictions
(60%) Meta does not announce Threads daily active users (different than the 100M total sign ups number) during their August earnings report. Instead bundling it into Instagram.
(30%) Threads has more daily users than Twitter by January 1, 2024
(70%) My primary text-based app is still Twitter on January 1, 2024
(90%) The majority of this selection of pseudonymous accounts are posting more on twitter than on Threads on January 1, 2024. Accounts: @growing_daniel,
, @dril, @hotformoot,(75%) The majority of the same accounts are posting more on twitter than on Threads on July 1, 2024
Disclaimer: I am an employee at Meta. I do not work on Threads and none of this is secret or material information.
You can nit-pick this if you want, but it’s really not the point.
For my engineering audience, imagine the difference between coding or refactoring in a high-test coverage environment vs none. Your ability to ship with confidence goes way up.
I think you'll be proven right