As the Elon Musk–induced turmoil continues at Twitter, competitor Meta launched a competitive platform. Billed as a friendlier Twitter, the Threads app had 30 million downloads in the first 16 hours, and it is promising advertisers more Twitter-like features are in the development pipeline.
“It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Threads post. “Twitter has had the opportunity do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.”
Threads is a text-focused app linked to Instagram that looks a lot like Twitter. Users can post up to 500 characters of text, post photos, links, and up to five minutes of videos. Because Threads is part of the Meta ecosystem, you will not be starting from zero to build a community. Sign-up is done through Instagram, allowing you to leverage that audience in kick-starting a following.
Early-adopting beauty brands are already active and establishing their presence on the platform. Interestingly, many that were the first to download the app do not currently have a Twitter strategy. When any new social platform emerges, moving quickly to secure a competitive advantage has to be weighed against the additional workload required to feed the content beast. Remember Clubhouse and the buzzy-for-a-moment anti-Instagram app Be Real?
We asked a few brands to share their early thoughts on Threads:
Why have you jumped in rather than taking a wait-and-see approach to Threads?
Allison Carey: "In past experiences, when new platforms pop up overnight, it’s been a race to get your brand handle exactly as you want it on a new platform. So we immediately jumped to ensure the @rawsugarliving handle was available. The great part of this new platform being linked to Meta is that our handle was already there and waiting for us. Such a relief—we know fellow social media managers will agree."
Tisha Thompson: "We have found the importance of being early on new social apps creates a much bigger advantage. It gives us an opportunity to scale and grow quicker as well as get ahead of the curve and learn and understand how the app works before it becomes wildly popular, and then we are unable to keep up with the momentum."
Meghan Maupin: "At the core of OurX is community, so we jumped right into Threads because we want to be where our customer is. So far we are finding it is a great way to connect 1:1 with our community and engage in authentic, two-way conversations."
Chris Salgardo: "At the onset of this launch we saw a tremendous reaction and sign-ups from beauty editors and industry insiders. We know that this is where we need to be to engaged and have casual conversations in an effort to build key relationships."
Keran Look Loy: "The Integration with Instagram made it very easy. It was a quick process to create a new profile, so we decided to move forward and launch a brand profile. Additionally, we can capture many of our existing Instagram followers on Threads, which is a turnkey way to build our audience quickly. Our next step is to monitor the platform over the next few weeks while strategizing content pillars that we can test."
Were you active on Twitter?
Allison Carey: "We were last active on Twitter in 2021. With the ever-changing landscape of the platform and our team’s ability to better understand our customer and their journey, we moved away from Twitter. It was no longer an optimal communication channel for us."
Tisha Thompson: "Although we had an account, we were not active on Twitter."
Meghan Maupin: "OurX is a recently launched brand, so we only post occasionally on Twitter to respond to current news and share thought leadership."
Chris Salgardo: "We have a micro community since we just launched a few months ago, but we are semi-active on the Twitter platform, and do not see it as a priority platform for us at the moment."
Keran Look Loy: "We haven’t been active since Q3 2022. This was intentional in an effort to focus on our more strategic social channels, specifically TikTok and Instagram."
What is your Twitter strategy, and are you simply replicating it, or are you doing something else?
Allison Carey: "Threads feels very fresh. It’s got a hint of Twitter but it also feels like a new opportunity to be more conversational. It’s in its early days and we recognize that this is yet another platform for our social media manager and marketing team to manage. We want to consider the additional workload and efforts of our team before just jumping in."
Tisha Thompson: "We have been prioritizing building our Meta audiences. The reason why we are jumping on Threads is because it allows us to migrate our existing community. We chose to not focus on building Twitter, as we have found it was slowly becoming less popular, and wasn’t the best use of our bandwidth. Joining threads instantly makes it so much easier because we already have a community that we can now interact with right out of the gate."
Meghan Maupin: "Right now, Threads is more similar to our Instagram content than Twitter. Education is one of our core pillars, but the content on Threads is shorter-form than other channels. For example, we hosted an Instagram Live with OurX Expert and Celebrity Stylist Johnny Wright. It was full of amazing tips for hair health. We’re taking those tips and making them into short, engaging, educational content on Threads."
Keran Look Loy: "Our previous Twitter strategy was one of replication from our IG page. Our audience on Twitter was relatively small (3.9K followers), but with Threads and the easy integration of reaching our existing Instagram audience there, we now have the opportunity to implement a custom strategy of engaging content pillars."
What do you think so far?
Allison Carey: "It’s fun to see how brands are showing up there and then discuss with our team how or if we want Raw Sugar to play in the general and specific conversations happening on Threads. We’ve seen this before, but it does feel new—kind of like the first time you saw Pinterest. We’re interested to see where it goes."
Meghan Maupin: "We are really liking it because of the way we can have real-time, direct conversations without the need for curated content creation."
Chris Salgardo: "I love that Threads dovetails with my existing IG communities—both personally and also through Atwater. As a new brand, building a community is extremely hard, especially on a new platform. With Threads, it's more seamless and easier to keep that community and continue to build while also reaching two entirely different audiences."
Keran Look Loy: "There’s definitely a lot of potential for brands to scale their organic marketing efforts, especially because of the easy integration with Instagram / Meta… but will it replace Twitter? It’s still very early to say. As the platform grows, brands will have to find a unique identity that gives their Threads followers a unique experience compared to what they have on IG or TikTok. It’s definitely challenging but exciting as the early adopters define the platform."
