This will probably also be playing out in courts or cage matches as Elon’s Twitter deals with Zuckerberg’s Threads by Instagram. The truth for organizations is that it makes sense to at least claim your Thread profile from your Instagram account, regardless of how you plan to use it.
- Character Limit: Threads gives users a 500-character count limit, while unverified Twitter users have a maximum of 280 characters. Verified Twitter users can increase their character limit to 25,000 for a fee of $8 a month.
- Account Linkage: Threads requires users to have an Instagram account and allows them to import bio information and followers from an existing Instagram profile. Twitter does not have this feature.
- Video Length: On Threads, all users can post videos that are five minutes long. On Twitter, users without the verified blue badge can post videos that are two minutes and 20 seconds long.
- Exploration: Twitter’s homepage allows users to view what’s trending and other topics they may be interested in. On Threads, the only way to explore content is by scrolling through the home feed.
- Drafts: As of the July 5th launch, Threads did not have the option to save drafts of posts, unlike Twitter where this feature is already present.
- Threading Experience: The threading experience is different on both platforms. On Threads, a user has to hit enter three times to start a thread, while on Twitter, it can be done by clicking on the plus button.
- Profile Likes: Threads does not offer an option to view other profiles’ likes, unlike Twitter which offers it as a separate tab.
- Content Rules: Threads will have the same content rules as Instagram, with the same controls for muting and blocking harassing accounts.
- Protocol: Threads is built on the same ActivityPub social-networking protocol as Mastodon and other decentralized social-media apps, allowing users to interact with a wider community beyond Instagram.
- Ads: Threads has launched without ads to attract as many users as possible, while Twitter displays ads. But as sure as the sun rises in the morning, know that ads are coming and will probably be accessible via the business.facebook.com portal.
- Content Access: Threads allows for unlimited scrolling of content while Twitter now limits users to 1k tweets per day as of July 2023.
- Termination of account: Twitter allows users to delete their accounts, while Threads doesn’t allow users to delete their accounts without deleting their connected Instagram account (you can disable). Though this seems like a temporary issue on Threads.
Hot Take
Until better analytics come it will be hard to understand post reach and impact. There has already been rapid adoption with over 30 million downloads in a day for Threads but it will take time for the personality of this platform to take shape. META (Facebook) will probably follow their playbook and try to keep users on their platform and maximize attention which will be monetized with ads. Don’t expect traffic from Threads so tread carefully if that is your goal.
We are bullish in seeing how videos are treated given the length is double what Twitter’s is.