Threads is Blowing Up: What’s It Mean for Creators?

Threads might just change the business of creativity

Happy Threadursday!

Zuckerberg’s Meta kicked off its Twitter killer this week, and it’s off to a strong start. The kids are calling it Threads—and the people have already spoken. Up to 30 million users within one day of launch, and already topping the App Store charts on iOS, the vibes are pretty immaculate.

What’s it mean for what was pitched as a kinder, more friendly Twitter? And more importantly—what’s it mean for how creatives market on social?

Twitter has an image problem. You might say it has a user problem, if you were feeling like being nice about it. Since Elon Musk’s takeover, the average daily number of tweets on the platform fell by 25%.

Twitter’s, to date, arguably been the best “true,” social media platform (not counting Discord, since it’s not a dedicated platform) for engagement. There’s been competitors. There’s still people trying to make Mastodon and BlueSky happen.

The former has the silo problem—reach is innately limited by design. Great for keeping up with friends and family, not so much for getting your work out there.

Jack Dorsey’s BlueSky is basically just a throwback to OG Twitter, and from a developer who shares more in vision with Musk than he differs. With Meta offering an actual competitor, on the framework of Instagram—it looks promising.

There’s no hashtags to date on Threads. It functions off Meta’s adaptive algorithm, and within a few hours of me testing it, it’s miles ahead of what Twitter is using. It has little need for hashtags. The only real feature so far that’s missing is a full-text search—only user searches are available as I’m writing this.

The early adopting community has also been speaking its mind about what’s not welcome on the platform—Moms for Liberty has gotten dragged today, after posting a spool (what the platform calls their version of a tweet) asking, “What do you see in your childrens’ schools that doesn’t belong there?” With most users clapping back, “Moms For Liberty,” or similar.

Similar backlashes have greeted migrants from Money Twitter—the purveyors of broetry and would-be entrepreneurs running glorified MLMs and influencers who’ve come over from both Instagram and Twitter.

Book Threaders (already adopting the name Bookthread) have been among the most vocal about wanting community and keeping inauthenticity away—even some former Bookstagrammers with devoted followings have met with some resistance for perfectly-curated posts.

What’s this mean for creatives?

So far, it looks like platform audiences are loving the vibes of Wendy’s and Wicked Clothes, as brands go, with many (myself included, on my bookstore’s account) following suit—unleashing our goblin energy to the world, to great effect. I’ve outpaced a couple of my competitors (traditional sellers of old books) already—despite a later start than their accounts.

Threads—or whichever app comes out on top in the Tweet Wars, and it’s likely it won’t be Twitter—is going to mean a renewed focus on real, meaningful engagement. This is an exciting time for those of us who create things, and hate sales and marketing—it’s an opportunity to be ourselves.

Which is something that late-stage corporate capitalism has done their level best to beat out of us. Now’s our chance to beat them at their own game.

It’s not a total Twitter killer yet—but so far, having tried the alternatives—it’s the most viable for creatives, and in many ways, already ahead of Twitter.

I’ve been around a while, and I’ve seen platforms come and go (RIP, MySpace), and I’ve seen a lot of promise for a wholesale rejection of traditional social media marketing. Never has that reality been so close, as with Threads.

And in the early days of the platform—we can make it happen. Threads’ beauty is in how user-driven it is, without being packed into a silo, or made ready for the same kind of greedy, corporate-style “monetization,” that befell Twitter, is befalling BlueSky, and is the greatest pain in the ass for those of us who create and talk about the things we love.

Highly recommend. This is the one to watch, y’all. And the earlier we set the culture for the platform, the more viable the methods will become.

This is our time.

You can find me on Threads under two accounts:

This part of me: @LanceDoesTheThing, and the shop: @FletcherCoBooks

If you enjoyed this, you’ll enjoy all my work — I’m delightful. Mostly. You can obviously check me out here on Medium —and you can sign up here, if you need to.