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Threads, Twitter, & Social Photos
It has been a few months since Mark Zuckerberg & Co. decided to launch a direct attack on Elon Musk and the anti-social network formerly known as Twitter. Threads, which was bootstrapped off Instagram’s social graph, became one of the fastest-growing consumer Internet services, though things have cooled a bit there.
Every time I see the Threads feed, I am reminded of yet another missed opportunity at Twitter — long before Elon took over the company. When Jack Dorsey was leading the company, Twitter made a boneheaded move to embrace live-streaming video. I felt it was all wrong and wrote about it for The New Yorker.
My conclusion:
So what should Twitter do? Instead of live-video streaming, it could focus on developing photo- and media-centric features, evolving the current platform to become a more visual, more friendly, and yet less angry place. It can’t count on forever being propped up by random tweets by the American President.
Of course, this was six years ago. Former President Trump got banned from the platform but has since been restored. However, it seems that Zuckerberg and his team have turned that idea into reality.
Whenever I visit Threads, I consistently find myself enjoying a feed filled with photographs. While many have been repurposed from Instagram, scrolling and looking at these images is effortless, especially now that Threads is available on the web. Instagram has transformed into what seems like a mix between QVC and TikTok – something I had predicted a long time ago.
The design is particularly conducive to viewing photos. The white space, the way the photos are rendered, and the styling of photo collections enhance the overall presentation. The vibe on Threads is the polar opposite. Even John Gruber, a long-time critic of Facebook, has been vocal in his appreciation of this new product from the same company. It’s surprising to see him overlooking the poor privacy-related track record of the Facebook family.
Still, Threads offers photos and photographers a second chance to find a home beyond a dying Instagram.
August 30, 2023. San Francisco.