Reminds me of how Instagram absorbed Snapchat usecases with stories. Instagram tackled the competition for ephemeral stories simply by implementing Stories as a feature.
This time, Threads is a fully fledged app. Getting users to adopt a new app might take as much time as getting Messenger installed. Still, Instagram has a robust social graph to lead users towards downloading it. In fact, they seem to have already onboarded users when they implemented part of Threads with the status update feature in the Instagram messages view.
Twitter will probably remain used by relatively "anti-social" people. In the States, that may be by politicized users, fueled by Elon's freedom fighting. Here in Japan, Twitter is very popular because of the sense of anonymity, coupled with the use of Kanji characters that achieves concision within 140 characters. Instagram might be too social for us (esp. male older than 25).
It will probably pain me to see the diaspora of users among many microblogging services. The transition to a new microblogging hub may be painful for both Twitter Inc (ie. X Corp) and Twitter users.
It's funny to see that Threads is the re-implementation of Facebook status updates before news articles swamped the Newsfeed. Meta's microblogging came back full circle.
It's funny that there is a narrative that Instagram killed Snapchat with their stories feature. Snapchat still has something like 383M DAU. That's a massive user base. Instagram Stories definitely blunted Snap's growth, especially with millennials and older.
I'm really interested in seeing what my Japanese friends do. I don't live in Japan but have made a bunch of friends there in my travels. They're super active on Twitter for baseball and car discussion.
Twitter is a much better social network in Japanese than in English. You are more likely to encounter people who want to discuss hobbies than being trolls. I think they'll stick to the end, just like the Titanic.
Making the jump seems a little challenging right now. Some Japanese people have tried Truth Social, even dominating the trends with Japanese keywords. I'm not sure if they'll stick there given its context with American politics.
As Twitter became popular in Japan with the 2011 Earthquake, the migration to Threads might be another earthquake away (which happens often here).[1]
I wonder who will be the core users of Threads in Japan. Twitter was popular among nerdy "Otakus" who often engaged in anime, gaming, or electronics. Facebook/Instagram always tended to be avoided by that demographics. Instead, Instagram in Japan is popular among young women, who post selfies or food pics. However, I'm not sure if they'll be receptive to a text-focused service.
[1] Side-anecdote: Twitter is the best earthquake detector. Whenever you feel a shake, Twitter users will confirm it sooner than traditional news sources.
If you don't know about it, then https://misskey.io/ is an extremely good Twitter alternative that is almost exclusively used by Japanese people. A lot of Japanese artists and others are eager to make the switch from Twitter too.
Also, Twitter isn't the best place to confirm if there is an earthquake anymore, since the website is completely private if you don't have an account. I use https://unnerv.jp/about/more instead now, since it's on Mastodon and can interop with misskey and other fediverse software easily.
Misskey is one fediverse software that can be used to host any instance. What you're seeing is one such instance. There are hundreds of others: https://www.fediverse.to/search/?sw=misskey
For what it's worth, the same friends I refer to on Twitter (Japanese baseball fans and those into cars) are also even more active on Instagram. That's how I found many of them to begin with. I'd say 70/30 split of male/female in my experience at least.
That's interesting! I didn't expect some demographics of Twitter to transition to a photo-centric social network like Instagram. I guess watching baseball is a hobby that happens outside and is suitable for snaps.
Are your friends mostly posting photos of baseball matches?
For baseball generally photos of themselves from their seats and then photos of the ballpark/field, so not all that different from American friends on IG. Also sometimes just photos or videos from batting cages or pitching cages.
For cars, typically group touring (basically group caravan drives to various landmarks and other places), photos of the cars with cool views or at interesting places, car shows, club meetings, etc.
This time, Threads is a fully fledged app. Getting users to adopt a new app might take as much time as getting Messenger installed. Still, Instagram has a robust social graph to lead users towards downloading it. In fact, they seem to have already onboarded users when they implemented part of Threads with the status update feature in the Instagram messages view.
Twitter will probably remain used by relatively "anti-social" people. In the States, that may be by politicized users, fueled by Elon's freedom fighting. Here in Japan, Twitter is very popular because of the sense of anonymity, coupled with the use of Kanji characters that achieves concision within 140 characters. Instagram might be too social for us (esp. male older than 25).
It will probably pain me to see the diaspora of users among many microblogging services. The transition to a new microblogging hub may be painful for both Twitter Inc (ie. X Corp) and Twitter users.
It's funny to see that Threads is the re-implementation of Facebook status updates before news articles swamped the Newsfeed. Meta's microblogging came back full circle.